Self-citations are a familiar, if occasionally disputed, part of academic knowledge construction and reputation-building, conducing to both the cumulative nature of academic research and aiding writers to foster their scientific authority and add to their careers. This study distinguishes a big growth in self-citations albeit this is subject to disciplinary variation and softened by a vast increase in citations overall, so that self-citation has fallen as a proportion of all citations. It tries to account for these changes and render a rhetorical comment for authorial practices.