Changing patterns of self-citation: cumulative inquiry or self-promotion?
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Ken Hyland
Ken Hyland is Professor of Applied Linguistics in education at the University of East Anglia. He was previously a professor at University College London and the University of Hong Kong and has taught in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is best known for his research into writing and academic discourse, having published over 200 articles and 26 books on these topics with 36,000 citations on Google Scholar.
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Feng (Kevin) Jiang
Feng (Kevin) Jiang is Distinguished Professor at the Faculty of Foreign Language Education at Jilin University, China. He gained his PhD under the supervision of Professor Ken Hyland at the Centre for Applied English Studies at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include disciplinary discourse, corpus studies and academic writing, and his publications have appeared in most major applied linguistics journals.
Abstract
Self-citations are a familiar, if sometimes controversial, element of academic knowledge construction and reputation-building, contributing to both the cumulative nature of academic research and helping writers to promote their scientific authority and enhance their careers. As scholarly publications become more specialized, more collaborative and more important for promotion and tenure, we might expect self-citation to play a more visible role in published research and this paper explores this possibility. Here we trace patterns of self-citation in papers from the same five journals in four disciplines at three time periods over the past 50 years, selected according to their impact ranking in 2015. We identify a large increase in self-citations although this is subject to disciplinary variation and tempered by a huge rise in citations overall, so that self-citation has fallen as a proportion of all citations. We attempt to account for these changes and give a rhetorical explanation for authorial practices.
About the authors
Ken Hyland is Professor of Applied Linguistics in education at the University of East Anglia. He was previously a professor at University College London and the University of Hong Kong and has taught in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is best known for his research into writing and academic discourse, having published over 200 articles and 26 books on these topics with 36,000 citations on Google Scholar.
Feng (Kevin) Jiang is Distinguished Professor at the Faculty of Foreign Language Education at Jilin University, China. He gained his PhD under the supervision of Professor Ken Hyland at the Centre for Applied English Studies at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include disciplinary discourse, corpus studies and academic writing, and his publications have appeared in most major applied linguistics journals.
Appendix. Journal list
Applied linguistics
TESOL Quarterly (1967–)
Language Learning (1948–)
Foreign Language Annals (1967–)
Modern Language Journal (1916–)
College Composition and Communication (1950–)
Sociology
American Journal of Sociology (1895–)
Social Problems (1953–)
The British Journal of Sociology (1950–)
American Journal of Economics and Sociology (1941–)
The Sociological Quarterly (1960–)
Biology
The Quarterly Review of Biology (1926–)
Biological Reviews (1923–)
Radiation Research (1954–)
BioScience (1964–)
The Journal of Experimental Biology (1923–)
Electrical engineering
Proceedings of the IEEE (1963–)
Automatica (1963–)
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (1963–)
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (1966–)
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (1963–)
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- The building blocks of speech: spontaneity, pre-packaging and the genre structuring of university lectures
- “Bacon wrapped cancer”: the discursive construction of meat carcinogenicity
- The American Dream meets the Chinese Dream: a corpus-driven phraseological analysis of news texts
- Marine engineering and sub-disciplinary variations: a rhetorical analysis of research article abstracts
- Changing patterns of self-citation: cumulative inquiry or self-promotion?
- Metaphor, discourse dynamics and register: applications to written descriptions of mental health problems
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- The building blocks of speech: spontaneity, pre-packaging and the genre structuring of university lectures
- “Bacon wrapped cancer”: the discursive construction of meat carcinogenicity
- The American Dream meets the Chinese Dream: a corpus-driven phraseological analysis of news texts
- Marine engineering and sub-disciplinary variations: a rhetorical analysis of research article abstracts
- Changing patterns of self-citation: cumulative inquiry or self-promotion?
- Metaphor, discourse dynamics and register: applications to written descriptions of mental health problems
