In‐text function of author self‐citations: Implications for research evaluation practice

Author self‐citations were examined as to their function, frequency, and location in the full text of research articles and compared with external citations. Function analysis was based on manual coding of a small dataset in the field of library and information studies, whereas the analyses by frequency and location used both this small dataset and a large dataset from PubMed Central. Strong evidence was found that self‐citations appear more likely to serve as substantial citations in a text than do external citations. This finding challenges previous studies that assumed that self‐citations should be discounted or even removed and suggests that self‐citations should be given more weight in citation analysis, if anything.