Document Type : Articles

Author

• M. R. Ghane

Ph. D., Regional Information Center for Science and Technology

Abstract

Highly cited papers are mostly authored in international collaboration. It is expected that   co-authored papers bring more citations. On the other hand, it is inevitable that a part of citations is self-citation. This study investigates 134 and 236 highly cited papers in Iran and Turkey, respectively, to determine the extent to which highly cited papers are affected by author self-citation. A comparison accross subject disciplines shows that highly cited papers in Clinical Medicine ( in Turky) and Physics (in Iran) received more citations than others while Engineering stands at the top position based on author self-citation counts in both countries. There is a significant relashionship between Iranian nationally co-authored papers and author self-citation. But it is not true of Turkish researchers. This indicates that Iranian contributors have more tendency toward author self-citation than Turkish researchers. Consequently, the influence of author self-citation on highly cited papers is to some extent a matter of citation behavior.