The Impact of Country Self-Citation Rate Among Medical Specialties in Saudi Arabia

Objectives The purpose of the study was to evaluate the impact of country self-citation rate (SCR) among medical specialties in Saudi Arabia, and to assess the impact of self-citations on the country’s total cites world ranking in different specialties. Methods SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) was used to collect data related to all medical specialties in Saudi Arabia for the period 1996-2019. The country SCR for the specialties was correlated with several bibliometric parameters and examined statistically. The specialties that showed a drop in Saudi Arabia’s total cites world ranking following the exclusion of self-citations were identified. Results The median country SCR for 46 specialties in Saudi Arabia was 9.5% (range: 4.6-23.1%). The two specialties with the highest country SCR were Public Health (23.1%) and Family Practice (22.9%). Country SCR was significantly higher in the non-clinical specialties compared to clinical specialties (15.3% vs. 9.6%). It did not correlate significantly with any of the examined productivity indices. The exclusion of self-citations resulted in a drop in Saudi Arabia’s total cites world ranking in six (13%) specialties only. There was no significant difference between the country’s total cites and net total cites world rankings in the specialties. Conclusions Self-citation may be appropriate and signify an expansion of the authors' previous work. Country SCR in medical specialties in Saudi Arabia is relatively low and not affected by total documents and total cites. Non-clinical specialties tend to self-cite more. The exclusion of self-citations had minimal effect on Saudi Arabia’s total cites world ranking, indicating that country SCR in the specialties is unlikely to impact its international scientific standing. Our findings do not support the argument for eliminating self-citation from citation-based metrics. We believe that more collaborative and global research practices should be encouraged.