Are journal and author self-citations a visibility strategy?

This study is aimed at analysing self-citation as a strategy used by journals and authors regarding first citations in of Latin-American psychology journals between 2012 and 2016. A total of 8977 citations received were analysed for a total of 2403 papers published in the 19 Latin-American psychology journals collected in the 2016 WoS (included in the 2015 JCR edition). The results indicate that there is an effect of the first self-citations on the number of citations, the journal self-citations and the author’s. It is observed that the journal self-citations and first journal self-citations are more important for the journals located in first quartiles, versus author’s self-citations. The importance of the type of self-citation differs between some publications and others, being the journal self-citations those that greater differences present between journals throughout the period studied. The self-consumption of information, according to the number of articles with self-citations, varies between the journals, ranging between 88.8 and 55.8%. It can be concluded that self-citations and first self-citations play an important role in the citation of the works and in the increase of their visibility.