I'm not Italian... and am not meeting any productivity threshold.
But my work is incremental, and I obviously don't want to repeat what I said in a different paper, so I cite earlier work in later work. TBH, I don't think it's possible to avoid self-citation unless:
1. Your research is so popular that by the time you need to cite it, it's been surveyed, or improved upon, or otherwise adapted.
2. You switch research subjects relatively often.
3. You publish "blocks" of work, each based on fundamentals in your field established by others - and they're not incremental.
But my work is incremental, and I obviously don't want to repeat what I said in a different paper, so I cite earlier work in later work. TBH, I don't think it's possible to avoid self-citation unless:
1. Your research is so popular that by the time you need to cite it, it's been surveyed, or improved upon, or otherwise adapted. 2. You switch research subjects relatively often. 3. You publish "blocks" of work, each based on fundamentals in your field established by others - and they're not incremental.