Correlation between self-citation and impact factor in Iranian english medical journals in WoS and ISC: A comparative approach

Background: in this study,the impact of self-citation (journal and author) on impact factor of iranian english med-ical journals in two international citation databases,web of science (wos) and islamic world science citation center (isc),were compared by citation analysis. methods: twelve journals in wos and 26 journals in isc databases indexed between the years (2006-2009) were se-lected and compared. for comparison of self-citation rate in two databases,we used wilcoxon and mann-whitney tests. we used pearson test for correlation of self-citation and if in wos,and the spearman‘s corre-lation coefficient for the isc database. covariance analysis was used for comparison of two correlation tests. p. value was 0.05 in all of tests. results: there was no significant difference between self-citation rates in two databases (p>0.05). findings also showed no significant difference between the correlation of journal self-citation and impact factor in two databases (p=0.526) however,there was significant difference between the author‘s self-citation and impact factor in these databases (p<0.001). conclusion: the impact of author‘s self-citation in the impact factor of wos was higher than the isc. © 2015,iranian journal of public health. all rights reserved.