Teaching how to cite scientific articles: a study of citation deviation in citing "multi-authored papers" by top authors from Iranian Universities of Medical Sciences in 2017.

Aim: The present study aims at teaching the right citation models in scientific publications by top authors from Iranian universities of medical sciences in 2017, considering the relationship between moral development and self-control variables and model of "citation to multi-authored papers" in these articles.

Background: Multi-authorship increases the amount of self-citation and also increases the likelihood of being cited by others.

Methods: This study is of the applied scientometrics and correlation (model presentation) studies type. The research population in the first part of this study includes all the authors who had an H-index of 10 or more in the scientific databases of 2017. The sample size at this stage was 110, selected by systematic random sampling. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 16.0.

Results: The results of regression analysis based on the concurrent method indicated that the regression model is significant. The coefficient of determination is 0.096 and the F ratio is 5.650, which are significant at the level of p <0.001. In this regression model, the variables of the level of moral development (β = -5.801, p <0.001) and self-control (p < 0.001, β = -0.253) have significant predictive power and can be considered as predictors of behavioral modeling in citing "multi-authored papers".

Conclusion: Based on the results, teaching how to avoid blindly citing the "multi-authored papers", which is regarded as a kind of "citation deviation", can, to some extent, lead to strengthening citation indexes.