1. Mining Citation Data Using the Web of Science API
A Data Gold Rush
Phil White
Earth Sciences & Environment Librarian

2. The Question:
How would I conduct a citation analysis? How could it be done more efficiently?

3. New Methods Web of Science Web of Science API How do I do this?
API = Application Programming Interface
SOAP API: runs on XML
API has a URL
Send the API URL an XML message, it will send an XML message in return
How do I do this?
One at a time using API tools (Postman, Hurl.it)
Programmatically using a program language like Ruby, Python, R

4. Test Case: Geological Sciences @ CU
Downloaded bibliography of Geoscience faculty pubs at CU for past 5 years
Symplectic Elements (CSV)
Each faculty publication comes with a Web of Science accession number
421 publications indexed by WOS
Developed Python script:
Opens CSV containing each WOS accession number
Sends XML message requesting all cited references for each accession number
Compiles each response into one XML document (24,448 citations)
About 9 minutes (bye bye student workers)
Cleaned data in OpenRefine
Standardized journal names using OpenRefine clustering tools
Matched citation data to local holdings data using OpenRefine reconciliation tool

5. Test Case: Geological Sciences @ CU
Results:
CU provides access to 92% of items cited 5 times or more
80% of all citations go to just 10% of all items cited (50% to just 1%)
Discovered gaps in library collection
Identified core collection of Geoscience serials (and the opposite)

6. Next Steps I’m not done! Current work: Future work:
Refine methods—test case matched data sets on serial titles. Very close now to matching on ISSNs. This will speed up process dramatically.
Integrate other APIs into workflow: OCLC, Crossref
Total time for test case about 40–50 hours. Could be as fast as 1 day.
Current work:
New science faculty at CU
Evaluate all sciences at CU
Future work:
Cross-institution comparison …?

7. Implications
A revolution for citation analysis and collection assessment?
Speed
Scale

8. Thank You! Want to collaborate?
Scripts:
More:
Want to collaborate?
Phil White
Earth Sciences & Environment Librarian