Analytical assessment of the relationship between the quality and self-citation in Persian Humanities Journals

Self-citation is an important challenging issue in evaluating the scientific outputs. The aim of this study was to assess analytically the relationship between the quality and self-citation in Persian Humanities Journals based on Persian Journal Citation Reports (PJCR) in the Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC). Citation analysis method was used in the present study and 67 Persian Humanities Journals indexed in the ISC database with impact factor. The results showed that the average self-citation rate for humanities sciences journals with selected impact factors in 2010 was 24. 45% in 2001- 2010. After analytical assessment of 67 reviewed journals، 23 of them had self-citation rate of 20% and less than 20%، and 20 of them had self-citation rate of more than 20%. Furthermore، results showed that the Impact Factor، Immediate Index، Matthew Value and the Proportion of Citing to their Articles with eliminating the effective self- citation in the four and combined indicators had decrease، increase and no changes in 65. 91%، 19. 35% and 14. 72% of journals، respectively. In addition، with eliminating the self- citations، the citation value of 56. 51% of the journals decreased، of 32. 78% had no changes and of 3. 94% of the journals reached to zero. There was positive and significant relationship between the self-citation and the quality of journals. Therefore، it is needed to determine a policy for the rate of self-citation on the behalf of editorial board to reduce it and to cite by the other journals.