Insights into the relationship between the h-index and self-citations

We analyze the publication output of 119 Chilean ecologists and find strong evidence that self-citations significantly affect the h-index increase. Furthermore, we show that the relationship between the increase in the h-index and the proportion of self-citations differs between high and low h-index researchers. In particular, our results show that it is in the low h-index group where self-citations cause the greater impact.