STANDARDS OF SELF-CITATION IN HIGH IMPACT ARTICLES OF NATURE JOURNAL

This investigation aims to understand self-citation patterns in scientific articles with a high impact factor from the journal Nature. The research is qualitative and the discussions are supported by the socio-cultural perspective that includes writing as a contextually situated literacy practice. From surveys carried out at Google Scholar, we selected for analysis the four most cited articles in the journal Nature. From the analysis, three occurrences are recurrent in these articles under analysis: the high rate of citation, self-citation and co-authorship. As for self-citation, we analyzed the context of publication of these studies, issues related to legitimacy, power and co-authorship relationships that mark academic-scientific writing. The self-citation patterns indicate a heterogeneous focus on the writing of the articles in this journal, which marks conventions in this area of knowledge, power relations manifested in partnerships between researchers, which implies legitimacy in the scientific community of the publications mentioned.