Citation and self-citation in articles from four disciplines

Purpose: This research aims at analyzing and comparing self-citation frequency and frequency of citation to others, and presenting a new approach to self-citation.
Methodology:  The study analyzes the articles of high-impact factor journals in four fields of science: Mathematics, Analytical Chemistry, Computer Science and Information Systems, and Biology.
 Findings: The research findings indicated that Mathematics has the highest self-citation frequency (26.5%), and Analytical Chemistry, Biology, and Computer Science and Information Systems have the self-citation frequency of 20%, 19%, and 12.5%, respectively. In all fields, the frequency of self-citation is higher than that of citation to others. Studying the rate of frequency distribution of citation in different parts of the articles shows that the most self-citation frequency is in the main body of the articles. On the other hand, frequency of citation to others in all of the studied fields (except Analytical Chemistry) in the main body is more than in the introductory sections of the articles.
Originality/value:The higher rate of self-citation frequency than the frequency of citation to others in the texts of articles likely suggests that self-citations comparing to other citations have closer relevance to the citing article. In addition, the results of this research with respect to the rate of self-citations and their position in different parts of the articles probably can provide a new approach to self-citation. Accordingly, self-citation in articles can be divided into two groups: more related/acceptable, and less related/unacceptable.