Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time

TL;DR

This study analyzes gender differences in self-citation practices across fields and over time, revealing men self-cite significantly more than women, which impacts academic visibility and career progression.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive historical analysis of gender disparities in self-citation using a large dataset spanning over two centuries.

Findings

Men self-cited 56% more than women from 1779 to 2011

Men's self-citation rate increased to 70% more than women's in recent decades

Women are over 10 percentage points more likely not to self-cite at all

Abstract

How common is self-citation in scholarly publication, and does the practice vary by gender? Using novel methods and a data set of 1.5 million research papers in the scholarly database JSTOR published between 1779 and 2011, the authors find that nearly 10 percent of references are self-citations by a paper's authors. The findings also show that between 1779 and 2011, men cited their own papers 56 percent more than did women. In the last two decades of data, men self-cited 70 percent more than women. Women are also more than 10 percentage points more likely than men to not cite their own previous work at all. While these patterns could result from differences in the number of papers that men and women authors have published rather than gender-specific patterns of self-citation behavior, this gender gap in self-citation rates has remained stable over the last 50 years, despite increased representation of women in academia. The authors break down self-citation patterns by academic field and number of authors and comment on potential mechanisms behind these observations. These findings have important implications for scholarly visibility and cumulative advantage in academic careers.