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Table 1 Distribution of research articles across 7 categories of numbers of authors, and means (SD) and medians (Q1-Q3) of citations obtained in 2015-20 (Total citations, citations by others, collective self-citations, self-citations as percentage of total), and percentage of uncited papers, for 88,594 articles in health-related fields published in 2015

From: In health research publications, the number of authors is strongly associated with collective self-citations but less so with citations by others

Number of authors

N (%)

Total citations, mean (SD)

median (Q1-Q3)

Citations by others, mean (SD)

median (Q1-Q3)

Collective self-citations, mean (SD)

median (Q1-Q3)

Percent collective self-citations,

mean (SD)

median (Q1-Q3)

Uncited articles (percent)

1

2618 (3.0)

10.5 (29.8)

2 (0–11)

9.6 (28.8)

2 (0–11)

0.8 (2.5)

0 (0–11)

10.6 (20.1)

0 (0–11)

40.6

2–4

19306 (21.8)

19.9 (76.5)

12 (6–23)

17.3 (75.9)

10 (4–23)

2.6 (3.8)

1 (0–23)

16.5 (19.7)

10 (0–23)

6.2

5–9

43159 (48.7)

22.5 (81.6)

15 (8–26)

18.9 (80.6)

12 (6–26)

3.6 (4.8)

2 (1–26)

19.3 (19.4)

14 (4–26)

1.4

10–19

20956 (23.7)

32.4 (54.6)

20 (11–36)

26.7 (50.2)

15 (8–36)

5.7 (7.7)

4 (1–36)

21.4 (18.5)

17 (8–36)

0.5

20–29

1874 (2.1)

67.2 (157.9)

33 (18–69)

55.5 (145.4)

26 (13–69)

11.6 (16.7)

7 (3–69)

23.2 (17.6)

20 (11–69)

0.1

30–49

491 (0.6)

109.4 (347.0)

39 (20–87)

91.0 (325.8)

29 (14–87)

18.4 (31.3)

9 (4–87)

26.0 (18.0)

23 (12–87)

0.6

≥ 50

190 (0.2)

93.7 (339.4)

36 (15–71)

72.5 (305.4)

26 (9–71)

21.2 (39.4)

10 (4–71)

34.8 (22.8)

32 (19–71)

0.5