Potentially coercive self-citation by peer reviewers: A cross-sectional study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2014.09.015Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Coercive citations in peer reviews are citations primarily intended to highlight the reviewer's work.

  • Of 428 total citations in the reviews, 122 (29%) were self-citations to the reviewer's own work.

  • Self-citations were more common in reviews recommending revision or acceptance (33%) versus rejection (15%).

  • 21% of reviewer self-citations had no rationale compared to 5% in citations to others' work.

  • Self-citation in peer review is common and is likely coercive in some cases.

Abstract

Objective

Peer reviewers sometimes request that authors cite their work, either appropriately or via coercive self-citation to highlight the reviewers' work. The objective of this study was to determine in peer reviews submitted to one biomedical journal (1) the extent of peer reviewer self-citation; (2) the proportion of reviews recommending revision or acceptance versus rejection that included reviewer self-citations; and (3) the proportion of reviewer self-citations versus citations to others that included a rationale.

Methods

Peer reviews for manuscripts submitted in 2012 to the Journal of Psychosomatic Research were evaluated. Data extraction was performed independently by two investigators.

Results

There were 616 peer reviews (526 reviewers; 276 manuscripts), of which 444 recommended revision or acceptance and 172 rejection. Of 428 total citations, there were 122 peer reviewer self-citations (29%) and 306 citations to others' work (71%). Self-citations were more common in reviews recommending revision or acceptance (105 of 316 citations; 33%) versus rejection (17/112; 15%; p < 0.001). The percentage of self-citations with no rationale (26 of 122; 21%) was higher than for citations to others' work (15 of 306; 5%; p < 0.001).

Conclusions

Self-citation in peer reviews is common and may reflect a combination of appropriate citation to research that should be cited in published articles and inappropriate citation intended to highlight the work of the peer reviewer. Providing instructions to peer reviewers about self-citation and asking them to indicate when and why they have self-cited may help to limit self-citation to appropriate, constructive recommendations.

Introduction

Medical journals rely on the input of outside peer reviewers to evaluate submitted manuscripts. Since peer review was introduced over 200 years ago, it has been viewed as an important quality control mechanism for scientific publication and a core component of the scientific process itself [1]. Clinicians give more credence to results published in peer-reviewed journals [2], and peer review is seen as an important indicator of scientific reputability [3]. Peer review, however, has been criticized for its inconsistency, for sometimes supporting narrow consensus and bias, and because it can be subjective and easily abused [4], [5], [6].

The impact of academic research is commonly quantified via citation metrics [7], [8], and it is well-documented that some researchers attempt to inflate their own citation counts through unnecessary self-citation to their own work in their publications [9], [10]. Similarly, the practice of “coercive self-citation” by editors of academic journals has been described [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], by which editors make requests to authors during the article review process to add citations from the editor's own journal without any rationale provided. That is, the editor gives no indication that the manuscript is lacking in attribution or contains important inaccuracies or specific gaps, which will be addressed via a discussion of a recommended citation [11].

Peer reviewers may also practice coercive self-citation during the article review process by requesting that authors cite the reviewers' own publications unnecessarily [7], [16]. Similar to coercive citation by editors, this would involve recommendations for citation to the reviewer's own work that does not address failures to properly attribute, information gaps, or inaccuracies in the manuscript. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers specifies that recommendations by a peer reviewer to cite his/her own work should be made only as necessary to substantively improve scientific publication and that peer reviewers should “not suggest that authors include citations to the reviewer's (or their associates') work merely to increase the reviewer's (or their associates') citation count or to enhance the visibility of their or their associates' work” [17]. In one study [18], however, 23% of US government researchers indicated in an anonymous survey that at some point a reviewer had requested that they include what they believed to be unnecessary references to his/her own publication(s) in a manuscript. No studies have examined actual peer reviews to determine how often potentially coercive peer reviewer self-citation occurs in the article review process.

The objective of this study was to examine peer reviews submitted to one journal over the course of a year and to assess whether there may be potentially coercive peer reviewer self-citation. We hypothesized that (1) a substantial number of peer reviews would include citations to the reviewer's work; (2) that if coercive peer reviews were present, then peer reviewers would include a greater proportion of self-citations in reviews where they recommended revision or acceptance compared to reviews where they recommended rejection; and (3) that a smaller proportion of peer reviewer self-citations would include a rationale that addressed attribution failures, specific information gaps, or inaccuracies in the manuscript compared to citations of the work of others.

Section snippets

Selection of peer reviews

The peer reviews that were evaluated were from manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Psychosomatic Research from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012. The journal is a multidisciplinary research journal that publishes a range of types of articles that focus on the relationship between psychology, medical illness and health care. The 2012 impact factor was 3.3. No specific instructions are provided by the journal to peer reviewers with respect to self-citation.

The authors of this study

Results

There were 305 manuscripts submitted to the journal in 2012 that were sent for peer review, not including 50 that were rejected without peer review. These 305 manuscripts were associated with 656 peer reviews. There were 5 manuscripts submitted by investigators of the present study with 11 peer reviews, which were excluded, leaving 300 manuscripts and 645 peer reviews. Of these, 29 peer reviews were excluded because the reviewer was an investigator in the present study. For 2 manuscripts, this

Discussion

This study examined peer reviews submitted to the Journal of Psychosomatic Research in 2012 to determine the frequency of reviewer self-citation and whether there were patterns of self-citation versus other citation in the reviews that are suggestive of potential coercive citation by peer reviewers. Of all citations included in the reviews, 29% were self-citations, and the percentage was statistically significantly higher among reviews recommending revision or acceptance (33%) compared to

Conflicts of interest

All authors have completed the Unified Competing Interest form at http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare that no authors have any conflict of interest disclosures for the past 3-year reporting period.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Thombs was supported by an Investigator Salary Award from the Arthritis Society. There was no specific funding for this study, and no funders had any role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The authors thank Carol Bergin of Elsevier for her assistance in obtaining the review data that we used for the study.

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