Announcement on Regulating Self-Citation Practices and Purifying the Academic Publishing Atmosphere
In order to strictly adhere to academic publishing ethics, standardize manuscript citation practices, eliminate utilitarian and non-academic inappropriate self-citation behaviors, maintain a fair and just academic publishing order, ensure the academic quality and credibility of journals and book publications, and guide a healthy academic exchange atmosphere, in accordance with domestic and international academic publishing norms and relevant publishing industry guidelines, our press hereby issues the following official announcement regarding the self-citation management requirements for all submitted, edited, and published manuscripts.
Ⅰ. Definition of self citation behavior
The self citation referred to in this announcement is divided into two categories: author self citation and publication self citation. The specific definition is as follows:
- Author self citation: The act of citing the author's (including all co authors and corresponding authors) published, accepted, and pending academic papers, monographs, research reports, and other achievements in the manuscript references.
- Self citation of publications: The act of citing self owned publications such as journals, series, monographs, and compilations under the publishing house in the manuscript references.
All self citation behaviors must follow the three principles of necessity, relevance, and academic rigor, and inappropriate self citation that is meaningless, utilitarian, or deliberately piled up is strictly prohibited.
Ⅱ. Compliance self citation standards
In order to balance the continuity of academic research and citation norms, our journal has established clear standards for self citation quantification and academic requirements. All submitted manuscripts must strictly comply with:
- Proportion standard: The proportion of self cited references by authors to the total referencesshould not exceed 15% of the total number of references; The proportion of self citation for review articles and research papers on continuity of project should not exceed 20%. The proportion of self citations in our publications should not exceed 10% of the total number of references, and the two types of self-citations should not be cumulatively counted.
- Content specification: All self cited literature must be highly relevant to the research topic, research methods, core conclusions, and research foundation of the manuscript. It is a necessary reference, extension of previous achievements, or important academic support for the conduct of this research. It is strictly prohibited to cite invalid literature that is unrelated to the content of the manuscript and only intended to increase citation frequency.
- Authenticity standards: Self cited literature must be the result of the author's real study and actual reference. It is strictly prohibited to falsely list or forge self cited literature, and it is strictly prohibited to extract self cited items that have not been consulted or referenced, ensuring that each self cited article has academic basis.
- Duplicate checking standards: The plagiarism ratio of published literatureafter removing one's own published works should comply with the acceptance standards of our journal.Self cited content must not constitute the core body of the manuscript, and there must be no issues such as large repetition or self plagiarism to ensure the originality of the manuscript.
III. Prohibition of Improper Self-Citations
Our publishing house explicitly prohibits all forms of improper self-citation that are of an academic misconduct nature. Any violations will be dealt with severely. Specific prohibited behaviors include:
- Utilitarian Self-Citations: Deliberately piling up self-cited references solely to boost personal citation data and publication impact factors.
- Self-Citations Lacking Relevance: Citing one's own or our publishing house's publications that have no connection to the research topic, argumentation process, or conclusions of this study.
- False Self-Citations: Citing unpublished, unaccepted, or non-existent personal work, or past work that has not been actually studied or referenced, thus artificially inflating the number of references.
- Forced or Induced Self-Citations: Any institution, individual, or reviewer that forces or induces authors to increase self-citations or citations of our publishing house's publications as a condition for manuscript acceptance or publication.
- Excessive and Repeated Self-Citations: Multiple manuscripts repeatedly and centrally citing the same author's or the same publication's work, creating malicious citation manipulation and closed-loop mutual citations—a chaotic academic practice.
Ⅳ. Review and Processing Mechanism
Our publishing house will incorporate self-citation compliance into the entire review process, from preliminary review to external review and final review. Relying on both the academic misconduct detection system and manual review, we strictly verify manuscript citation standards and implement the following measures for violations:
- Minor Violations: Manuscripts with a slightly excessive self-citation ratio or a small number of weakly related self-citations without malicious intent will be returned to the author for revision within a specified period. Manuscripts that fail to meet the revision standards will not proceed to the next review stage.
- General Violations: Manuscripts with obvious utilitarian self-citations, false self-citations, severely excessive self-citation ratios, or those piling up invalid self-citations will be rejected immediately, and an academic misconduct warning will be issued.
- Serious Violations: Authors who engage in serious academic misconduct such as forced self-citation, malicious citation manipulation, bulk inappropriate self-citation, or self-plagiarism, or who commit multiple violations, will be placed on our publishing house's academic misconduct blacklist. All their submissions will be rejected for 1-3 years, and the author's institution and relevant academic management departments will be notified as appropriate.
- If any improper self-citation is discovered after a published article has been reviewed, our publishing house will issue a correction statement or a retraction statement in accordance with regulations, revoke the article's eligibility for publication and inclusion, and retain a record of academic misconduct.
Ⅴ. Relevant Explanations
- Our publishing house respects normal academic inheritance and research continuity. Reasonable, necessary, and relevant self-citations are normal academic behavior and are not absolutely prohibited. We only control utilitarian, invalid, and illegal self-citations.
- By submitting a manuscript, all authors agree to all the requirements of this announcement and must consciously abide by academic publishing ethics, submit manuscripts in good faithand standard citations.
- This announcement is effective from the date of its publication. In case of any inconsistency between our previous regulations and this announcement, this announcement shall prevail.
- We welcome authors and colleagues in the academic community to monitor all kinds of inappropriate self-citations and academic misconduct, and work together to maintain a pure, rigorous, and fair academic publishing environment.
This is hereby announced.