Why should I lump self and nonself citations together?
The NRC did not distinguish between self and nonself citations (they had no ready means of doing so), so our counts should include both. What happens to citations of a paper while it is “in press”? Or those that cite it incorrectly? Are they included in its citation total? No. Although ISI does record citations of papers as “in press,” those citations are not included in the published paper’s eventual citation totals. Neither are citations that include typographical errors in journal title, volume, beginning page number, or date. ISI currently has no way of identifying an erroneous or in-press citation with the paper it was intended to cite, so such citations appear in the “Cited Ref Search” results as citations of items not included in the database, just as citations of, e.g., books and book chapters do. Until ISI can devise a reliable way of reconciling such discrepancies (and they are working on the problem), these citations cannot be added to the totals of the papers they are inten
