<p>Although 'science knows no country' is a truism, the diversification of global science and the ongoing evolution of societal development continue to influence the behavior of the scientific community. Self-citing behavior at the largest scale, i.e., national self-citations and self-references, may act as an indicator of the consensus and attitude within a national academia, yet there is a scarcity of research analyzing these behaviors through the lens of intention and motivation. This paper investigates the academic role of national self-references in the process of scholarly communication and examines their adherence to Mertonian scientific norms. Our quantitative analysis of over 4.5 million citation contexts reveals that national self-references play a more significant role in leveraging research resources and methodologies compared to non-self-references. The findings also demonstrate that self-references in the majority of countries are aligned with scientific norms, some exhibit passive norm violations, with no instances of active violation identified. Our research suggests that the national tendencies in self-reference behavior may be related to societal-level trust within science or the culture of scientific confidence in each country. These dynamics appear to stem from each country’s scientific power—comprising practices, techniques and substances developed in the laboratories—which exert controlling on the world and people beyond the laboratory setting.</p>