Citation Analysis
Citation analysis involves counting the number of times a scientific paper or researcher is cited and works on the assumption that influential scientists and important works are cited more than the others. See article Rise and Rise of Citation Analysis.
Quality of a research publication is judged by the frequency and number of times it has been cited by other researchers.
- How many times have your publications been cited?
Citation Searching in Web of Science
Why should I use Web of Science?
Web of Science is the major database for citation information. It covers a range of disciplines and includes citation indexes for science, social science, arts and humanities. Web of Science provides customised tools for organising and analysing citation information.
For other citation databases
CSA
Business Source Premier
Ovid Databases
SciFinder Scholar
Introduction to Web of Science
Web of Science contains three citation indexes:
Citation Information in Web of Science
Web of Science Search Tools
Cited Ref Search searches for journal articles and/or authors others have cited in their works.
General Search searches for journal articles about a topic and/or written by a particular author(s) and by author's address.
Advanced Search is for experienced users who want create complex searches using field tags and set combinations with Boolean Operators.
Author Finder search allows you to find and analyse citing references of articles written by a particular author, using subject field and author's institution to help you identify the right author.
How to do a Cited Reference Search
Step 1Find articles that cite articles written by Laura Gitlin in 2006. If you do not know Gitlin's area of research, search all three citation indexes.
Type "Gitlin L*" in the "Cited Author" field and "2006" in the "Cited Year" field.
Step 2
Web of Science retrieves a list of all of the articles written by Gitlin in 2006. This list has the names of the journals and the titles of Gitlin's articles.
Citation Variations
A cited reference may have variations in Web of Science. Notice Gitlin's citation appearing in black, in the example. One author has cited it with an error in the page numbers.
33 authors have cited the same reference correctly. Actual correct citation count for this article is 34. Only the cited reference search will list variations in citing and reflect the correct number of times an article has been cited.
Citation Analysis Tools
Refine your resultsRefine allows you to limit your results, for example to find the top authors or journals.
Steps:
- Perform a topic search using General Search form
- Click on Refine your results
- Select source titles or authors
- Select one or more check boxes, and then
- Click View Records to display only the records that contain the selected items.
Analyze Results
Analyze allows you to identify key institutions, authors. In this case records have been analysed by citing institutions and countries.
Steps:
- Sort your result set by "Times Cited" via drop menu on the right hand side of the summary page.
- Click the Analyze Results button on the right-hand side of the Summary page.
- Choose the field data: author names, institutions, countries etc.
Citation Report
Citation Report feature provides graphs and statistics of an author's publication and citation trend. A citation report includes:
- The total number of times all items have been cited
- The average number of times an item has been cited
- Remove self-citation feature
- H-Index
- The number of times an item has been cited each year
- The average number of times an item has been cited in a year
