Citation analyses in archaeology have detected prestige tactics, shifts in research agendas, and patterns of gender differentiation. This paper focuses on self-citation in archaeology and systematically analyzes the factors that affect rates of self-citation. Self-citation rates in archaeology are significantly higher than in socio-cultural anthropology but are average for a social science with interdisciplinary ties to the physical sciences. Self-citation correlates weakly with the gender of the citing author and the geographic and thematic focus of research, but correlates strongly with the age of the author. Additional analyses reveal partial evidence for the use of self-citation as a prestige tactic. The paper concludes with a discussion of citations to writers close to the author (mentors, friends).
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Meg Conkey, Eugene Hammel, Christine Hastorf, Rosemary Joyce, Shanti Morell-Hart, Fred McGee, and Ruth Tringham for various forms of assistance in this project. I also thank Mary C. Beaudry, an anonymous reviewer, and the editors of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory—Cathy Cameron and James Skibo—for promptly suggesting revisions that benefited the manuscript greatly.
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Appendix: Discussion of sampling methods and sample sizes.
Appendix: Discussion of sampling methods and sample sizes.
The sample of papers from American Anthropologist includes socio-cultural articles from issues 2 and 4 of 2001, issues 1 and 2 from 2002 all issues from 2003, and issues 1, 2, and 3 from 2004. The sample includes 74 papers. Ten of these articles could be classified as linguistic anthropology. Archaeology and physical anthropology papers appearing in these issues of American Anthropologist were not included. From American Ethnologist, I used articles from 2002 and 2003. This sample includes 55 papers. From American Antiquity, I used articles (not including “comments,” “reports” or “book reviews”) from one issue in 1997 and all issues from 1998 to 2000. This yielded a sample of 35 articles. That the articles from American Antiquity and the other archaeology journals come mostly from the 1990s and the socio-cultural articles come from the 21st century resulted from the fact that the data on socio-cultural articles was gathered during revisions made to the paper a few years after the research on the archeology articles was completed. For the Journal of Field Archaeology, I included all articles (n=142) from 1989 to 1998, not including “technical reports” or “special studies.” From Ancient Mesoamerica I included 165 of the 181 articles (not including editorials and the brief introductions to special sections) published from 1990 to 1998. The sixteen articles omitted from the study did not focus directly on ancient Mesoamerica: memorials to deceased archaeologists, reminiscences on the impact of the Carnegie Institution, discussions of psychoactive toads, etc. From Southeastern Archaeology I included 79 of the 88 papers published between 1989 and 1998. Seven papers in the 1994 special issue were not considered because the bibliographies for each paper were mixed together with those of the other papers. An additional two papers were omitted from the discussion because they were historical/biographical (a paper on Jeffries Wyman in the first issue of 1990 and a paper on the Alabama Anthropological Society in the second issue of 1994).
The 285 papers included in the multiple regression represent approximately two thirds of the total articles that appeared in the four journals during the time spans monitored. The other third of the papers were excluded because I could not readily determine the professional age of the first author or because the papers could not be assigned to any of the ten research topics.
The analysis of comments published in American Antiquity was based on a sample of 37 comments from the years 1989–1998. A total of 51 comments were published in this time period; 14 were excluded from the analysis because they contained no bibliography.
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Hutson, S.R. Self-Citation in Archaeology: Age, Gender, Prestige, and the Self. J Archaeol Method Theory 13, 1–18 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-006-9001-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-006-9001-5