Self-Citations in Academic Excellence: Analysis of the Top 1% Highly Cited India-Affiliated Research Papers

Abstract: Citations demonstrate the credibility, impact, and connection of a paper with the academic community. Self-citations support research continuity but, if excessive, may inflate metrics and raise bias concerns. The aim of the study is to examine the role of self-citations towards the research impact of India. To study this, 3.58 million papers affiliated with India from 1947 to 2024 in the Scopus database were downloaded, and 2.96 million were filtered according to document type and publication year up to 2023. Further filtering based on high citation counts identified the top 1% of highly cited papers, totaling 29,556. The results indicate that the impact of Indian research, measured by highly cited papers, has grown exponentially since 2000, reaching a peak during the 2011-2020 decade. Among the citations received by these 29,556 papers, 6% are self-citations. Papers with a high proportion of self-citations (>90%) are predominantly from recent decades and are associated with smaller team sizes. The findings also reveal that smaller teams are primarily domestic, whereas larger teams are more likely to involve international collaborations. Domestic collaborations dominate smaller team sizes in terms of both self-citations and publications, whereas international collaborations gain prominence as team sizes increase. The results indicate that while domestic collaborations produce a higher number of highly cited papers, international collaborations are more likely to generate self-citations. The top international collaborators in highly cited papers are the USA, followed by UK, and Germany.