Increasing your citation rates - Leeds University Library

Source: http://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/356/publication_and_impact/299/increasing_your_citation_rates/1

Increasing your citation rates

There are a number of ways that you can improve your citation rates as a researcher, here are some suggestions, based on this literature review on improving citation counts, conducted in March 2014:

• Make research outputs open access where possible
  Evidence shows that open access articles are cited significantly more than non-open access articles. 

• Where funding permits publish using the gold open access route where possible 
  Publishing via the Gold open access route can result in research being made open access immediately for other researchers to read and cite.

• Share your research data where possible
  Evidence suggests that clinical trials which shared their data were more frequently cited than trials that did not. Sharing research data can make research more accessible and visible.

• Use a consistent author name
  Evidence shows
  that using a consistent author name throughout a research career can
  help to enhance retrieval of a researcher's output. Changing names
  throughout a career can make it difficult to associate research output
  to the correct author.

• Use an author identification system
  Evidence suggests that using an author identification system such as ORCID or ResearcherID can
  help to ensure research outputs are accurately linked to a researcher's
  profile and as a result, improve the visibility of the research. These
  systems can be particularly useful in overcoming problems with
  inconsistent name formats, legal name changes, highly similar names,
  common names etc.

• Include 'University of Leeds' in the institutional affiliation field of all research outputs
  Using
  the standardised institutional affiliation "University of Leeds" in all
  research outputs ensures they are clearly affiliated with the
  University of Leeds and as a result, improve the visibility of the
  research.

• Use online media to promote and link to your research 
  Evidence
  suggests there are statistically significant associations between
  higher citations for articles and the use of various social networking
  sites such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums.

• Collaborate with international authors across multiple institutionsEvidence suggests that international collaborations lead to higher citation rates. Promotion
  and disseminating opportunities of the collaborating institutions and
  less overlap between personal networks of authors can help to increase
  citation impact.

• Collaborate with the corporate sector
  Evidence found that academic-corporate collaborations increase the citation impact of papers.

• Publish review articles
  Evidence suggests that review articles typically produce more citations when compared to other types of papers.

• Self-cite previous work when appropriate and relevant Evidence
  shows the more an author cites their own work then the more the author
  is cited by other researchers. Self-citations should not always be
  considered improper, especially when the work that is being cited is
  relevant and appropriate.

Increasing your citation rates - Leeds University Library