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Citation Analysis

Counting citations is often called "citation analysis." In your
scholarly research, you may need to gauge the importance of a
publication by counting the number of times it has been cited by other
scholars. When you count the number of times an article has been cited
in published research, you gain information about that article's impact
on its discipline. If an article has a high number of citations, you may
conclude that it has been the subject of discussion or criticism in its
discipline. In addition, finding the list of articles that have cited
an article can help you find more information about your research topic,
a process called "citation chasing."


"Counting citations" sounds simple; however, citation analysis tools
count citations from different sets of publications. When you are
performing a citation analysis, you may wish to use several resources to
count citations in order to fully capture an article's impact.


Several tools can help you to find out how many times a specific article, author, or journal has been cited:

• Web of Science   
• Scopus   
• Google Scholar   
• Other Resources

Web of Science

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You can use the Web of Science database (composed of Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index) to find the citation count for a specific article.  To use Web of Science, follow these steps:

1. Visit the Library Gateway and search the title, "Web of Science," in the search box under Easy Search. Click "Search." 
2. A direct link to Web of Science will be at the top of your search
   results: click that link to enter the database, then click on "Cited
   Reference Search."
   
   
   
   
   
3. In Cited Reference Search, you will need to enter information about
   your article. For example, we could use Cited Reference Search to locate
   the following citation:
   Leggett, Anthony J. The quantum measurement problem.  Science v. 307, n. 5711, pp. 871-872, 2005.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Cited Reference Search produces a list of articles.  Some of the
   articles will not be what you want.  Match the citation information to
   an article on the list.  In this case, we know we are looking for an
   article by Leggett in volume 307 of Science, published in 2005.  Place a check mark next to the correct article, and click "Finish Search."
   
   
   
   The final result is a list of articles that have cited the article:
   
   
   
   
   
   

Remember: When Web of Science counts citations, it is only counting
citations from articles indexed by ThomsonISI, the company that owns Web
of Science.

Scopus

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Scopus will also provide a citation count for a specific article. To use Scopus, follow these steps:

1. Visit the Library Gateway and click on the link that says, "Online Journals & Databases." 
2. In Online Journals & Databases, enter "Scopus" in the search box and click "Search."
3. When you get into Scopus, enter the information you have about the
   author or article for which you are searching. For example, we could
   search for the following:
   Leggett, Anthony J. The quantum measurement problem. Science v. 307, n. 5711, pp. 871-872, 2005.
   
   
   
4. Scopus tries to locate the article for which you are searching. Look
   at the record(s) Scopus produces to be sure that it has given you the
   correct article. Look to the right of the record for the number of times
   the article has been cited. Click on that number to see the list of
   articles that have cited the article for which you searched.
5. The final result is a list of articles that have cited the article.  

Remember: When Scopus counts citations, it is only counting citations from articles included in the Scopus database. 

Google Scholar

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If you search for an article in Google Scholar, you can view both articles and book chapters that have cited a work.  To use Google Scholar, follow these steps:

1. Visit Google Scholar at http://scholar.google.com.  Google Scholar looks a lot like the regular Google interface. However, when you search Google Scholar, you are at the web address http://scholar.google.com. When using Google Scholar, you are searching within a selection of journals and book titles.
2. Select "Advanced Scholar Search" to search for a specific article.
3. In Advanced Scholar Search, enter information about the article for which you would like to find cited references. 
4. Google Scholar
   locates the article.  Below the citation, the link that says, "Cited
   by..." indicates the number of times Scholar find that the article has
   been cited.
5. Clicking on the "Cited by" link produces the list of articles that have cited the article for which you searched. 

Important notes about Google Scholar

Google Scholar
is likely to produce more cited references than either Web of Science
or Scopus, but it also produces duplicates.  In addition, Google does
not provide a complete list of all the publications it indexes, so it is
difficult to know if Google Scholar provides comprehensive citation counts.

Learn more

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Certain disciplines, journals, and document types may not be well
represented in the more traditional citation counting resources, like
Web of Science.  Some databases that also provide citation counts
include:

• PubMed
• MathSciNet
• EBSCO databases in Online Journals & Databases,
  including Academic Search Premier, America: History and Life,
  Communication and Mass Media Complete, EconLit, Environment Index,
  Historical Abstracts
• ScienceDirect
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Databases

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Citation Analysis