Self-Citation: When to Cite Yourself and How to Do It

Whether you are building on your thesis, referring to a previous publication, or citing your own unpublished data, self-citation takes the same care as citing anyone else — plus one thing extra: a judgement about whether this really is the best source.

The Basic Rule

Cite your previous work the way you would cite another author's: surname and year, third person.

Correct:

Incorrect — mixing first person with a parenthetical citation of yourself:

Write it either as a plain citation or as a first-person sentence without the redundant parenthetical ("In earlier work I found…"), depending on whether your discipline permits first person at all. What does not work is both at once.

The examples on this page are bracketed templates rather than named examples, deliberately: a self-citation is by definition your own work, so any name we printed here would be somebody we invented.

Why Self-Citation Matters

Self-citation does real work. It shows what your study builds on, attributes your earlier wording so that reusing it is not passed off as new, gives readers the background they need, and makes the trajectory of a research programme legible.

The problem is never self-citation as such. It is self-citation that is not the most relevant thing you could have cited.

When It Is Appropriate

Cite your own work when it directly supports or informs the current study, when you are building on a method or framework you developed, when the reader needs it to follow this paper, and when it is genuinely the best available source rather than merely a relevant one.

When to Avoid It

Skip it when the link is tangential, when a stronger or more authoritative source exists, when the proportion is out of keeping with the topic, or when the motive is metrics rather than meaning. Reviewers and editors notice, and it costs you credibility on the paper in front of them.

Citing Your Own Published Work

Nothing special applies: use your style's normal format for that source type. Templates, with your own details in the brackets:

APA:

MLA:

For the exact element order for a journal article, a thesis, a dataset or a preprint, use your style's own reference-examples page or our per-style guides — that is where the current form lives, and it changes between editions.

Citing Your Thesis or Dissertation

A thesis has its own source type in every major style, and what a reader needs is the route to the copy of record: the degree, the awarding institution, and the repository or database where it sits, with its URL or DOI.

If your thesis is under embargo, say so in your text, because a reader will not be able to reach it.

Citing Unpublished Work

For a manuscript in preparation, submitted or under review, the honest signal is the status, because the status is what tells a reader how much weight to give it:

Be sparing with these. A reader cannot check a manuscript they cannot obtain, so an argument that leans on one leans on your word. If the work is on a preprint server, cite the preprint instead — it has a version, a date and a DOI.

Citing Your Own Data or Materials

Where an instrument or dataset came out of earlier work, point at the earlier work:

If the dataset is deposited in a repository with its own DOI, cite that directly. A dataset citation is the one that lets someone reuse your data, which is the point of depositing it.

Blind Peer Review

Under blind review, a self-citation can identify you. Journals handle this differently: some ask you to anonymise self-citations in the submitted version, some ask you to leave them and handle it themselves.

Where anonymisation is requested, journals usually specify the form. It typically looks like this, with the full reference restored at acceptance:

Use the wording your target journal asks for, not a generic pattern, and keep a copy of the un-anonymised manuscript.

Self-Citation and Self-Plagiarism Are Different Problems

Self-citation is attributing your earlier ideas or findings to yourself. That is correct practice.

Reusing your earlier text without saying so is the problem. The ICMJE recommendations put it in terms of publication rather than sentences: "Duplicate publication is publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published, without clear, visible reference to the previous publication." The operative words are clear, visible reference — the fault is the concealment, not the overlap.

So if you are reusing substantial text from your own earlier work: quote yourself with a citation, paraphrase with a citation, or seek permission where copyright sat with a publisher. Check your target journal's own policy too; many state a threshold or a procedure.

How Much Self-Citation Is Too Much?

There is no published threshold, and we are not going to invent one — a fixed percentage would be wrong for a researcher who founded a narrow subfield and equally wrong for someone entering a crowded one.

Use a test instead of a number: for each self-citation, would a neutral reader in your field agree that this is the most relevant source for that sentence? Where the answer is no, replace it or cut it. If several fail the test, the pattern will be visible to a reviewer whether or not anyone counts.

Some journals and funders do ask about self-citation rates in specific contexts. If yours does, its stated rule is the one that applies.

Sources

• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Overlapping publications (Recommendations, Section III.D) — source of the duplicate-publication definition quoted above. https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html (read 22 September 2026)

Exact reference formats for each source type belong to the style manuals; apastyle.apa.org blocks automated requests, so this page gives templates and points you at your style's own examples page rather than asserting an element order we could not read today.