Need advice for testing of hypotheses related to the self-citation method

[ReneZ]

What do you mean exactly by "initialisation problem"?

If the "initialisation problem" is not knowing what/where the seeds are, I don't see why it is a problem.

One problem is exactly that we don't know.

A more theoretical problem is that it has never been described and nobody seems to care about it.

The whole approach does not work without it.
It is an integral part of the method.