Recent analyses reveal that China’s dominance in academic citations may be bolstered by a significant proportion of those citations coming from within the country itself.
A study by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) found that 62% of citations to China’s top 10% of highly cited papers were from Chinese researchers, a rate far surpassing other nations. This high level of internal citations has been attributed to a combination of factors, including the growth of high-quality research, a strategic focus on publishing in high-impact journals, and a Chinese culture of “guanxi,” or mutual support. However, this trend raises questions about the global ranking of China’s research impact.
While self-citation is a known phenomenon in academic publishing, China’s high rate stands out when compared to other countries. The NISTEP study did not differentiate between legitimate citations and practices like “citation stacking,” where researchers boost citation counts through mutual citation agreements. Nevertheless, China’s research continues to attract increasing attention from U.S. and European scholars. A second analysis by Claudia Steinwender from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and colleagues, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, confirmed China’s high internal citation rate and suggested that China’s rise in global citation rankings might be overstated when corrected for home-country bias. This study found that after adjusting for this bias, China dropped from second to fourth in the global ranking of top-cited papers.
The findings highlight the complexity of measuring scientific impact. Home-country citation bias is a natural outcome in large nations like China and the U.S., but accounting for this bias is essential for fair global comparisons. Steinwender’s work is part of a broader effort to develop more accurate measures of scientific impact, especially as citation counts can be distorted by factors like fraud, plagiarism, and the rise of low-quality journals. Despite these challenges, China continues to lead in terms of average citations per paper, reflecting the country’s growing influence in the global scientific community.
Source: Science