evaluation of self-citation of iranian scientific medical journals indexed in scopus citation index

introduction: self-citation is considered as one of the greatest shortcomings of citation analysis. although self-citation is natural for journals, its excessive use would eliminate the journal from evaluations made by databases. this study examined the rate of self-citation of iranian scientific medical journals in english indexed in scopus citation index during 2005-2009. methods: this descriptive survey used citation analysis. the study population included scientific medical journals (n = 16) published in english and indexed in the scopus database. data was collected using a researcher-developed checklist whose validity was confirmed. through direct observations and referring to scopus citation index, the titles of journals were searched and their resources were evaluated. data was analyzed by spss and excel. results: based on the results, the average rate of self-citation among the studied journals was 29.64% while 14.43% of the total citations were self-citations. the highest and lowest rates of self-citations belonged to hepatitis monthly journal (100%) and iranian journal of medical sciences (6.88%), respectively. in addition, highest and lowest rates of self-citations were observed in 2009 (42.34%) and 2005 (13.95%), respectively. conclusion: the mean rate of self-citation is relatively high among iranian journals, i.e. it is very close to the self-citation limit in the world. the rates increased by 300% since the first studied year (2005) to the last year (2009). thus, journals should reduce this rate and try to attract more citations from other journals.