Prevalence and Impact of Self-Citation in Academic Plastic Surgery.

Results: A total of 247 plastic surgeons were included. 78.6% cited previous work at least once (mean 34.3 +/87.5 self-citations). These self-citations accounted for 4.8% of all citations. Including self-citations in bibliometric analyses increased h-indices from 9.5 +/6.9 to 10.2 +/7.6. A minority of researchers (20.1%) increased their h-index via self-citation by at least one integer value (range, 0-5). At a threshold delta h-index of 1, authors had on average 78 articles and an h-index of 18. As authors achieved more publications, they were able to increase their hindex via self-citation to a greater degree.