When researchers refer to another author’s work in their own published work, they cite it.
Such citations can be analysed to measure the usage of the cited work.
A citation index is a compilation of all the cited references from articles published during a particular year or period. A citation index allows you to determine the research impact of your publications according to the number of times it has been cited by other researchers.
- Web of Science
- Alternatives to Web of Science
- Strategies to increase citations to your publications
- Be aware that…
- Related guides
Web of Science
Web of Science® is perhaps the most well-known tool for determining the number of times a publication has been cited.
Web of Science® is made up of three citation indexes owned by Thomson Scientific:
- Science Citation Index ®
- Social Sciences Citation Index ®
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index ®.
Within Web of Science®, cited reference searching can be used to find articles that have cited a previously published work. This enables you to trace research forward in time, to see how an idea has been confirmed, applied, improved or corrected. Cited reference searching can also be used to determine the number of times a publication has been cited.
In Arts & Humanities Citation Index®, cited reference searching also enables you to find articles that make reference to and/or include an illustration of a work of art or a music score.
Cited reference searching is a two-step process. First, you look up a cited reference. You can search by cited author, cited work (e.g. journal title, book title or patent number), or cited year. Second, you select the cited reference(s) of interest, then retrieve the articles that cite the reference(s).
Watch Thomson Scientific's demonstration of Cited Reference Searching.
Alternatives to Web of Science
For many disciplines Web of Science® has limited coverage. Do not despair however, there are many other resources which offer cited reference searching, including:
- CiteSeer (Information Technology)
- Google Scholar (Multidisciplinary)
- ScienceDirect(Multidisciplinary)
- SmealSearch (Business)
Contact your Liaison Librarian for assistance with using these resources.
h-Index
The h-index is a variation on the concept of times cited. The h-index was proposed in 2005 by Jorge E. Hirsch to quantify the research achievement of physicists based on their publication record. The h-index has been applied to other fields such as biology and computing science.
A researcher with an index of h has published h papers with at least h citations each.
Want to know more? Read:
Hirsch, Jorge E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output . Retrieved August 8, 2006, from http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/?0508025.
Strategies to increase citations to your publications
- Target a journal with a high impact factor, or, in fact, with any impact factor at all!
- Choose a new, rapidly growing field of research. Articles on hot topics tend to cite much more recent references than those in more traditional fields.
- Target journals in rapidly growing research fields because they tend to publish papers with a short time interval from submission to acceptance.
- Write research articles, technical notes and reviews. For the purposes of calculating citations, these are considered “citable” items. Editorials, letters, news items and meeting abstracts are “non-citable items”.
- Write reviews in addition to research papers. Reviews are more likely to be cited than original research papers.
- Write at length. Longer articles are cited more often.
- Make it easy for others to access your work. Online availability of articles clearly increases citations (and therefore, the journal’s impact factor). It helps if researchers can find relevant articles and access them instantly, rather than working their way through barriers of passwords and technicalities. This effect will increase with the availability of search engines like Google Scholar.
- Target “open access” journals (especially if they have an impact factor).
- Make your work available via the QUT ePrints archive, remembering that Google searches ePrint archives.
- Put the address for your ePrints page into your email signature as a clickable link.
- Don’t write as a member of a consortium. It’s better to be one in a list of individual authors. Some evidence shows citations to articles written by consortia have been undercounted.
Be aware that...
- Not all research is published and cited in the citation indexes, for example, conference proceedings are often poorly covered.
- In other words, the calculation of the number of times a work has been cited, is limited to the number of times it has been cited by articles indexed in that database.
- Only research articles, technical notes and reviews are “citable” items. Editorials, letters, news items and meeting abstracts are “non-citable items”.
- Only a small percentage of articles are highly cited and they are found in a small subset of journals. This small proportion accounts for a large percentage of citations.
- Controversial papers, such as those based on fraudulent data, may be highly cited.
- The number of times a work has been cited should not be used to gauge the quality of the work, it really only measures the interests of other researchers in the work.
- Citation bias may exist. For example, English language resources may be favoured. Authors may cite their own work.
- Your rate of self-citation and citations among the members of a research group may be scrutinised under the RQF Guidelines.
Related guides