Citation analysis

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Introduction

See also Author impact metrics, Bibliometrics and Impact factor

"...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 is a bibliographic tool and a tracking activity in academia. It is linked to many of the ideas of Eugene Garfield and the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) from the 1960s. ISI's Science Citation Index, for example, began publication in 1961. Due to changes in scholarly publishing and open access since that time, not to mention greater computing power, it is now possible to track citations using a number of simple search tools and algorithms. Google's PageRank, for example, is based on some of the same principles of citation analysis, where many links leading to the same article give it a higher pagerank in Google results. It is possible to do rudimentary citation analysis using Google scholar. More recent forms of citation include the use of Google scholar and social media such as Mendeley and Zotero.

Background to citation analysis

For promotion and tenure, faculty track articles that cite their work in papers, books and chapters in monographs. Bibliometrics - also cited reference searching - is a way to analyze the work of major authors in a specified field. It may be viewed as a quantitative method of impact of scholars in their chosen field - and even a kind of ego-surfing. Although Google scholar provides free access to some of this information through its cited by feature, generally this type of searching requires a well-structured database that includes cited reference search features. Finding occurrences of authors and journal articles in footnotes and bibliographies of publications in print or digital form 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