Self-citation can help to advertise your previous publications.
Any comment or opinion are welcome.
Self citation is recommended in ethics so you wouldn't have to plagriase yourself. U can cite just as you would for another author.
Well, that depends. When you have several publications on same topic, you need to cite self. But, irrelevant self-citation that intended to increase the number obviously unethical.
I agree with Mohammad. You can cite yourself if (a) you are not overdoing it and (b) your citations are relevant. The best indicator whether you are overdoing it is the proportion of self-citations that you have.
Sumanjeet Singh Purpose in this context is rather vague. Of course, it does not make any sense to cite papers that are completely unrelated. What exactly do you mean by unethical?
Self citation without purpose is wrong practice. Purpose means sometimes we cite paper just to increase our research impact. In reality such reference or citation is not very relevant. As it is not purely illegal we consider it unethical
The succinct comments from Mohammad and Horst adequately respond to this question. But let's not duplicate lengthy discourse that has the general issue of 'citation manipulation' well covered by COPE: https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/Forum%20discussion%20topic_final.pdf
They have also had a more recent discussion on this:
https://publicationethics.org/cope-newsletter/2017/nov/cope-digest-publication-ethics-practice-november-2017-vol-5-issue-11
Self citation is recommended in ethics so you wouldn't have to plagriase yourself. U can cite just as you would for another author.
Anne Emem Uwagbai You are absolutely right. The key issue is just the relevance of the respective paper. If the "fit" is good, self citation is perfectly fine.
I don't think self-citation is automatically unethical. Sometimes you write about something and you need to summarize or make a reference about that topic. You cannot write again the same thing with every new article you produce, so you just cite yourself because it's useful. I don't see any problem there. But there's people that just write and insist on citing themselves every time, with every book, chapter or article. That kind of shows either unethical behaviour or lack of interest in reading other interesting people.
It is not fair to consider all self citations unethical. If you are continuing a previous line of inquiry you have to cite your older works! You need not construe it as advertisements.
I believe the question should rather be "How do I use citations meaningfully?". There are articles that go like "Recent research found that information systems are really important (Selfcitation, 2018)"
Would that be unethical? Probably not, since someone may actually stress the importance of IS in her paper. Would that be meaningful - for instance, does the reference help the reader to gain a better understanding of the theoretical background? I doubt, unless Selfcitation's (2018) main goal throughout their paper is to show how important information systems is.
As a reader, I often wish authors were more parsimonious and precise in using references. For example, I would like to find page numbers whenever is possible. If you can point me to a specific page in a paper that supports a statement - and the article is good research - I would not really care if it looks like you are self-promoting your own work - which I anyways see as a collective effort to some extend.
I don’t think it is again research ethics? Instead, I think it is v normal and common. At least, researchers are also humans, we are not omnipotent. Research generally would last the whole life for a researcher and go deep and deep, certainly s/he would cite the previous work.
Not at all.. if u hv made useful contributions in an area of research and are citing your own papers its completely ethical, provided citations of urs are related to the study.
I agree with the answers above. For my upcoming Nature Journal article about daylight the editor suggested to use my 2018 Nature Journal article Article Make lighting healthier
as reference. As it was supporting my argument quite well, I agreed to use it. I think a good rule is 10% of all references to be your own.
Every relevant citation is important in research. If self-citation is relevant then, in my opinion, is not against ethics.
Ammar A. Oglat -
Generally, to assure an accurate practice, self-citations should be used to support the arguments, not to demonstrate your research. Moreover, self-cites may used to compare recent findings of the research with previous results when studying the same theme. The important point here is to avoid turning self-citations into self-promotion.
It is ethical, but you need to consider the circumstances and properly cite your work. By properly cite I mean that you should cite only the relevant.
What interests me is how long this question keeps going and why we 're-invent the wheel' when someone has provided a comprehensive and detailed (and ethical) response. As I wrote more than a year ago : let's not duplicate lengthy discourse that has the general issue of 'citation manipulation' well covered by COPE: https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/Forum%20discussion%20topic_final.pdf
They have also had a more recent discussion on this:
https://publicationethics.org/cope-newsletter/2017/nov/cope-digest-publication-ethics-practice-november-2017-vol-5-issue-11
It's nice to chat, and no one has written anything to be radically disagreed with. What we should be doing is discussing whether the COPE response is adequate or does it need updating or adding to? If there is an 'expert' opinion - let's go to it and engage with that.
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