Impact of country self citation on the ranking of the top 50 countries in clinical neurology

Objectives: To examine the factors that influence country self-citation rate (SCR) in clinical neurology and to assess the impact of self-citation on the ranking of the top 50 countries.

Methods: SCImago Journal & Country Rank was used to collect data for the 50 most cited countries in clinical neurology during 1996-2019. Country SCR was correlated with several productivity parameters and examined statistically. Countries that dropped in their ranking after the exclusion of self-citations were identified.

Results: The median (range) country SCR for the 50 most cited countries was 11.3%.(5.3%- 47%). Country SCR correlated significantly with total citable documents and total cites numbers and rankings. The exclusion of self-citations led to a drop in the ranking of 8(16%) countries only. No significant difference between the total and net total cites rankings was observed.

Conclusions: Self-citation can be appropriate and reflect an expansion on earlier research. Highly cited productive countries tend to have high country SCR. Excluding self-citations had minimal impact on the ranking of the top 50 countries. Our findings indicate that self-citation is unlikely to influence country standing amongst the top 50 and does not support the argument for eliminating self-citations from citation-based metrics. A more globalization through international collaboration in research is encouraged.