Self-citation of Faculty Members in University of Tehran in Journals Social Sciences Letters and Geographical Studies during 1999 and 2008

The present study aims to investigate the status and amount of self-citation in papers written by faculty members of University of Tehran in journals "Social Sciences Letters" and "Geographical Studies" during 1999 and 2008. To reach the goal, 212 papers were scrutinized using citation analysis method, which included 4565 citations. The research findings indicate that a considerable number of the articles, i.e. approximately half of them, in these two journals include self-citation. In addition, one third of the authors have used self-citation in their papers. The average level of self-citation in the journals “Social Sciences Letters” and “Geographical Studies” was obtained to be 0.8% and 0.6%, respectively. Annual investigation of the articles revealed that self-citation does not occur with a regulated rate, and that regarding the document type, the most cited documents in the journals’ articles were the articles previously published in these two journals. Furthermore, a significant difference exists between the amount of self-citation and number of authors in articles. Scrutinizing the self-citation life cycle, it was also identified that about 46% of self-citations are in a two-year time period before the publication of the corresponding papers and that, the authors in their citation behavior have more cited their own recent articles.