Journal self-citation XII: The ethics of forced journal citations

Abstract

A recent and controversial issue in the academic publishing process is "forced journal self-citations"-i.e., the requirement that the author(s) include a minimum number of references to a journal as a condition of publication. This paper uses stakeholder theory to model the positions of both authors and journal representatives. We also used two empirical surveys to answer the questions (1) how ethical are such requests, and (2) how common are they? Our initial, stakeholder analysis suggests that neither an author nor the IS profession at large is likely to consider such requests ethical. Our empirical surveys suggest that, although about one-third of the respondents had encountered such requests, most agreed that such requests are unethical. © 2009 by the authors.