Self-citation in research articles published in Scielo Chile: variation according to the field of science and the expertise of the author

The objective of this analysis was to describe the use of self-citation in research articles published in Scielo Chile, written by authors from different scientific areas and with different levels of expertise in the field of scientific publications. Based on an inductive-deductive approach, we analyzed 182 articles from five areas of science, written between 2010 and 2014 by novice and expert authors. The main results show that the field of Humanities leads the frequency of self-citations, in opposition to the field of Medical Sciences, where self-citations are less common. These results could be attributed to the fact that the authors of Human Sciences require greater dissemination of their work, being the self-citation a simple and quick way to increase the citation indexes and the visibility of their research. Regarding the level of expertise, the authors presenting more self-citations are the expert ones. In conclusion, we believe that self-citation is a positioning strategy for authors in order to show previous works, demonstrate a research line, increase his/her impact values or achieve visibility, or simple vanity.