  How common is self-citation in scholarly publication, and does the practice
vary by gender? Using novel methods and a data set of 1.5 million research
papers in the scholarly database JSTOR published between 1779 and 2011, the
authors find that nearly 10 percent of references are self-citations by a
paper's authors. The findings also show that between 1779 and 2011, men cited
their own papers 56 percent more than did women. In the last two decades of
data, men self-cited 70 percent more than women. Women are also more than 10
percentage points more likely than men to not cite their own previous work at
all. While these patterns could result from differences in the number of papers
that men and women authors have published rather than gender-specific patterns
of self-citation behavior, this gender gap in self-citation rates has remained
stable over the last 50 years, despite increased representation of women in
academia. The authors break down self-citation patterns by academic field and
number of authors and comment on potential mechanisms behind these
observations. These findings have important implications for scholarly
visibility and cumulative advantage in academic careers.
