Rajesh Singh Deputy Librarian University of Delhi Measuring Research Output

Introduction ”A professor may ask, ”Who is citing my articles? How many times have I been cited? What is my h-index score?” A student may enquire, ”How do I know if this article is important?” A scholar may ask, ”Which journal should I publish in?” A different scholar asks, ”What are the best journals in the field of Anthropology?” Robin Kear & Danielle Colbert-Lewis 2011, "Citation searching and bibliometric measures: Resources for ranking and tracking", College & Research Libraries News, vol. 72, no. 8

Citation Analysis  Citation analysis is the study of the impact and assumed quality of an article, an author or an institution based on the number of times works and/or authors have been cited by others.  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.  "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. What is it?

Introduction to citation analysis  To find out how much impact a particular article has had, by showing which other authors based some work upon it or cited it as an example within their own papers.  To find out more about a field or topic; i.e. by reading the papers that cite a seminal work in that area.  To determine how much impact a particular author has had by looking at his/her total number of citations.  Several tools can help you to find out how many times a specific article, author, or journal has been cited. These tools are referred as citation indexes/databases. Citation Analysis - Why use it?

Introduction to citation analysis ”A citation index is a kind of bibliographic database, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents”. Definition of citation index:

Introduction to citation analysis Cited references are always retrospective in nature pointing to documents in the past Citing references are always prospective in nature referring to previously published documents used by subsequent authors writing at a future time

Introduction to citation analysis

Kinds of Citation Data Articles Citation Impact Authors Number of papers (Quantity) Number of Citations (Quality) Average number of citations/article h-index (Quantity & Quality Both) Journals Journal Impact Factor h-index

Citation Databases Web of Science Scopus Google Scholar

Web of Science Since 1963, formerly produced by ISI Covers over 11,500 journal titles and 120,000 conference proceedings Consists of:  Science Citation Index to present  Social Sciences Citation Index to present  Arts & Humanities Citation Index to present Very good coverage of sciences compared to social sciences and arts and humanities. US and English-language biased. Limited coverage of non-English language titles. Does not include books, book chapters or theses Full coverage of citations. Limited downloading options.

Scopus Launched by Elsevier in Positioning itself as an alternative to ISI. More journals from smaller publishers and open access (Covers over 18,000 journal titles and 4.4 million conference papers) Source data back to Excellent for physical and biological sciences compared to social sciences, humanities or arts. Better international coverage (60% of titles are non-US) Better coverage of social science titles than Web of Science Better coverage of non-English language publications from Europe than Web of Science Citation data only available for papers published from 1996 onwards Does not include books, book chapters or theses Easy to use in searching for source publications Citation tracker works up to 1000 records only. Limited downloading options.

Google Scholar Launched in 2004 Better coverage of much wider range of material than Web of Science or Scopus for all citations as it retrieve web ! More coverage of references also. Better coverage of non-English language publications from Africa, Asia and Central and South America than Web of Science or Scopus No source list or indication of timescale covered. Coverage not clear Inclusion criteria? Very limited search options No separate cited author search Back to 1990 NOT more ! Free!

Three sources for citation data

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