Using citation metrics as part of academic recruitment decisions leads to an increase in self-citations

The use of citation metrics in academic hiring and promotion decisions was intended as a response to important and legitimate concerns over the meritocracy of recruitment procedures. However, evidence suggests that doing so distorts scientists' behaviour and increases the risk that these measures become unreliable. Marco Seeber, Mattia Cattaneo, Michele Meoli and Paolo Malighetti investigated the use of citation metrics within the Italian higher education system and found that scientists responded to a new regulation linking career advancement to metric scores by increasingly citing their own work. Policymakers should take note and use bibliometric tools as a means of informing rather than determining evaluations, as advocated by initiatives such as DORA and the Leiden Manifesto.