Abstract

From a bibliometric perspective, scholarly inbreeding has been identified in journals through the excessive use of both author and journal self-citations. However, editorial bias toward researchers from the same institution as the editorial management team has seldom been considered. According to the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, this occurs when a journal publishes more than 20% of documents authored by researchers affiliated with the same institution as the editorial management team. The purpose of this study is to establish the extent to which 81 Latin American journals managed by universities publish intramural documents (defined as those published by its own faculties). Results revealed that 56% of Brazilian journals were not compliant with the 20% benchmark as well as 44% of Colombian journals, 50% of Chilean journals, and 71% of Mexican journals. Interestingly, one third of these journals published the majority of the documents in English. By examining the documents published by these journals and subsequent citations to these articles, it was established that the intramural documents of some journals registered a higher ratio of citations per document in comparison with extramural documents published in the same journals. The results presented in this study provide evidence of inbreeding in some academically managed journals from Latin America. Although no one specific reason can account for this phenomenon, plausible explanations are given that may contribute to its understanding.