Citation analysis

Are you interested in contributing to HLWIKI International – hlwiki.ca? contact: dean.giustini@ubc.ca To browse other articles on a range of HSL topics, see the A-Z index. Last Update 18 May 2013 Introduction See also Altmetrics | Author impact metrics | Bibliometrics | Impact factors | ImpactStory | Scopus vs. Web of Science | Webometrics "...citation analysis is a bibliometric tool that is becoming increasingly popular to evaluate the performance of different actors in the academic and scientific arena, ranging from individual scholars (1–3), to journals, departments, universities (4), and national institutions (5), up to whole countries (6). The outcome of such analysis often plays a crucial role in deciding which grants are awarded, how applicants for a position are ranked, and even the fate of scientific institutions. It is then crucial that citation analysis is carried out in the most precise and unbiased way...." — Radicchi, 2008 Citation analysis (also called citation indexing) is a bibliographic tracking activity commonly performed in the academic and scholarly communities. Citation analysis was originally described by Eugene Garfield and his company, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), subsequently created the Citation Indexes in 1961 (now Web of Science). Due to changes in scholarly publishing and open access, newer citation tracking methods (including combining various methods) have emerged. Google's PageRank, for example, is based on similar citation analysis principles, where links leading to the same article provide a higher pagerank in Google. It is possible to do rudimentary citation analysis using Google scholar. More recent methods have been performed using Google scholar and social media such as Mendeley and Zotero, however those methods have come under sharp criticism by various academics such as Peter Jacso. Bernard Becker Medical Library Project, Assessing the Impact of Research a model for assessment of research impact Background to citation analysis For promotion and tenure, faculty are expected to track articles that cite their work whether they are papers, books or book chapters. Bibliometrics, or cited reference searching, is a way to analyze the scholarly output of authors within specified disciplines. This tracking is a quantitative method of determining impact, and a kind of ego-surfing. While Google scholar provides free access to some of this data via its cited by feature, generally this type of data-mining requires a structured database with cited reference search features. Finding occurences of authors and articles in footnotes and bibliographies of publications in print and digital formats is the main purpose of these tools. One of the best sources for this type of searching is Scientific Thomson's Web of Science (WoS). As a proprietary tool it requires a subscription to access it. The Web of Science (WoS) is a multidisciplinary database that contains the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Another important proprietary tool for citation analysis is Scopus developed by the European publisher, Elsevier. Scopus provides cited reference searching for a range of scientific, technical, medical and social sciences literature. References Bartneck C, Kokkelmans S. Detecting h-index manipulation through self-citation analysis. Scientometrics. 2011 Apr;87(1):85–98. Colaco M, Svider PF, Mauro KM, Eloy JA, Jackson-Rosario I. Is there a relationship between NIH funding and research impact in academic urology? 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