The practice of strategic journal self-citation: it exists, and should stop

This note highlights how journal self-citation practices substantially influence impact factor-based journal rankings in the field of Transportation. Furthermore, by means of analyzing Thomson Reuters’ most recent Journal Citation Report (JCR), I show that a substantial share of these self-citations is likely to be the result of strategic behavior by editors of journals. I conclude with a call to editors to stop requesting or nudging authors to add journal self-citations to their papers; and a call to authors to stop giving in to editors when being asked to provide such citations.