Who Cited Me? An Introduction to Citation Searching and Analysis

Roman KoshykarDestination Intersession 2014

OverviewWho Cited Me?

What won’t be covered today

• Citation analysis is complex and (sometimes) controversial!

• This session does not explore the more controversial aspects around the RELATIVE importance of where literature is published

What will be covered today

• How to discover what subsequent citations have been made to literature once it has been published and indexed

• Reference to a publication Discover where else in the literature it has been cited

• Name of a scholar Discover where that scholar’s work has been cited and generate a report on citation activity

AgendaWho Cited Me?

Session agenda

• Using Web of Science – Primary citation analysis database• Cited Reference Search

• Author Search

• Citation Analysis Reports

• Other library databases with “Cited By” features

• Cited reference data in Google Scholar

Web of ScienceWho Cited Me?

What is Web of Science?

• Produced by Thomson Reuters and provided by the RIT Libraries, Web of Science ambiguously refers to two things: a resource platform containing several databases, some of which are used for cited reference searching (now called Web of Science Core Collection)

• Web of Science combines several citation indexes containing decades worth of cited reference data

• Find Web of Science using the Database Finder

Cited Reference Search• Starting with a known reference, discover other

publications that have cited that source in their list of references

• Three basic search fields (cited author, cited work, cited year); possible to add additional fields for more advanced searching

• Author names – syntax must be Last Name Initials with no comma (so my name would be searched as KOSHYKAR RG, or KOSHYKAR R* if you don’t know my middle initial)

• Journal titles are abbreviated, but abbreviations are inconsistent – I often omit this field and select from results after searching author name and pub year

Author Search

• Discover citations to an individual scholar’s work over the course of his/her career

• Uses author name (same format as in Cited Ref Search), research domain, and organizational affiliation to narrow down to the individual scholar

• Generate reports on citations to that scholar’s work and on that scholar’s publication history

• Keep in mind – ONLY sources that have been indexed by Web of Science will be found and included in these citation analysis reports

Citation Analysis Reports

• Reports are tied to the Author Search feature; therefore they reflect one scholar’s publication history

• Create Citation Report – publications per year, citations per year, sum of times cited, citations per pub per year, most/least cited pubs

• Analyze Results – generate data on co-authors and publication titles, export up to 500 records to Excel for further processing

Cited By in library databases

Who Cited Me?

Cited By counts in individual databases• Some other library databases offer “Cited By” searching as a

value-added service

• This is not a feature available in all library databases, and may be added or removed with subsequent interface designs

• Cited By counts in individual databases only reflect citations from other items indexed in that database

• If a citing source is not indexed in that database, it will be missed in the Cited By feature

• Web of Science possesses the largest interdisciplinary data set for citation data (except perhaps one other search system…)

Examples• Cited By consistently appears in:

• ACM Digital Library• IEEE Xplore• Science Direct

• Cited By appears for some results in:

• EBSCOHost databases (labeled “Times Cited in This Database”)

• Certain ProQuest databases• Engineering Village databases (via Scopus, which limits our

use of data)

Google ScholarWho Cited Me?

Citation data in Google Scholar

• Google Scholar search results often include a Cited By number

• Google tends to put more highly cited results at the top of your search results list

• However – Cited By does not display for all Google Scholar results, and it may be inconsistent with citation counts indexed by Web of Science

Google Scholar Citations

• Individual scholars can create profiles for themselves in Google Scholar Citations, which will provide reports on citation information to their work and appear when someone searches Google Scholar for them by name

• Pros – free to use (requires a Google account); more literature types are counted (e.g. books, patents, open source journals, etc.)

• Cons – requires a Google account (subject to their terms and conditions); service is still developing and Google may end it at any time; users must opt in and create/maintain their own profiles to generate citation reports

Who Cited Me? An Introduction to Citation Searching and Analysis

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