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As a scientific journal reviewer, how can I deal with a manuscript where the authors cited their own works extensively (14 times) in the manuscript?

Buffy
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David
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    I don't think you can determine excessive self-citation just by counting. – Bryan Krause Nov 24 '23 at 11:24
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    Are the citations relevant? Perhaps the field is small and a lot of the work is done by a few people? I.e. a large portion by the author themself. – Felix B. Nov 24 '23 at 11:25
  • There are a lot of works done previously in the field. However, the authors only cited their own work and include some irrelevant text in the introduction in order to cite their own work. – David Nov 24 '23 at 11:27
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    Both referees raised this point that unnecessary self citation is not accepted. However, the authors did not address this concern appropriately. – David Nov 24 '23 at 11:29
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    then you could state in the review, that you don't see how the introduction is relevant to this work (explain or cut it) and point out the missing citations to other work done previously in this field. – Felix B. Nov 24 '23 at 11:29
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    Given that the purpose of the introduction is to set the context of a paper, I think that "irrelevant text" is a judgement call and nothing more. – Buffy Nov 24 '23 at 12:41
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    14 is not too much, I had to review a paper with 30 self-citations and 5 other citations. However, I rejected the paper on different more pressing issues. – yarchik Nov 24 '23 at 21:59
  • My main concern was the authors hindex that increased from 0 to 9 just in two years from 2022 to 2023. – David Nov 25 '23 at 02:08
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    @David Your role as reviewer is to assess the paper in front of you not police metrics. – Jack Aidley Nov 25 '23 at 07:59
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    @David Most websites give a h-index with and without self-citations, you can very easily see if someone is trying to inflate their h-index by excessively citing their own work. – Tom Nov 25 '23 at 22:07
  • @JackAidley as a reviewer I am familiar with my role, otherwise I must have not been invited to do a review. What i am thinking is to understand whether the paper in front of me is of enough quality or it has been written for other than scientific purpose? – David Nov 26 '23 at 08:36
  • I forgot to mention that the first author published her first paper in 2022, and now in 2023 they cited their works 14 times in tbeir paper which I am doing a review for. There are quite a lot of previously published works on this topic but they only cited their own works that they have published since 2022. – David Nov 26 '23 at 09:12

3 Answers3

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Present clear arguments in your review that describe which self-citations are irrelevant and why you argue that this is the case. Assuming that this is a reputable journal, this forces the author to either remove these citations or provide evidence of their importance in their rebuttal.

However, note that, as mentioned in the comments, the number of self-citations is not an indicator of whether they are appropriate or not. If the author has worked on related topics a lot, then it may well be appropriate to provide all these references. If this is the case, but you nevertheless want to argue that there is an unfair balance between self-citations and citations of other relevant publications, mention this in your review and provide examples of important papers that are missing.

Theoretician
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    You can also point out other works that should have been cited by the authors, though that isn't necessarily damning either. Context is required. – Buffy Nov 24 '23 at 12:25
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There are a lot of works done previously in the field. However, the authors only cited their own work and include some irrelevant text in the introduction in order to cite their own work.

If this is the case, you're accusing the authors of misconduct. Therefore write all your concerns into the confidential-to-editor box, and let the editor handle it.

Allure
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    Actually, one doesn't need to cite all works done previously in the field. It is a question of relevance to the current paper and only that. It may be misconduct, even if only sloppiness, or it may not. But mentioning such, rather than a accusation, is fine. – Buffy Nov 24 '23 at 14:39
  • @Buffy yes, but the key part is "include some irrelevant text in the introduction in order to cite their own work". – Allure Dec 04 '23 at 01:37
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You could just mention as a side comment in the review that the number of self-citations might be interpreted by some as a reflection of the vanity of the author and/or an attempt to game citation metrics, and that in either case it may be in the author's self-interest to investigate which self-citations might be removed from the citation list without any substantive loss to the manuscript.

Ken C
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