Academic publishing business models: Self-citations and the selectivity–reputation trade-off

Abstract The growth of scientific journals is constrained by a trade-off between selectivity and reputation. A strong reputation attracts submissions but enhancing reputation requires selectivity, meaning many submissions must be rejected. Conversely, lowering selectivity allows journals to publish more papers but also lowers the average quality of published work, undermining reputation and eventually attracting fewer submissions. Because of this trade-off, scientific journals display moderate growth rates. In recent years, however, some publishers whose revenues depend largely on gold open access (OA) article processing charges (APC) have displayed staggering growth rates. One strategy to circumvent the selectivity–reputation trade-off is to inflate self-citations contributing to the journal impact factor (JIF). We investigate the citation flows of 8,360 journals from the 20 largest for-profit publishers included in the Journal Citation Report by Clarivate, over a period of 25 years (1997–2021). Using a gravity model of journal citation flows, we find that Gold OA journals display high self-citation rates, particularly to articles contributing to the JIF. This pattern is much more pronounced among journals owned by two large Gold OA publishers. Moreover, the intensity of self-citations for these two publishers’ journals increased with growth rate, suggesting that self-citations contributed to counteracting a decline in citations resulting from rapid expansion.