Download Bibliometrics: From Garfield to Google Scholar

Measuring
Research Output
Rajesh Singh
Deputy Librarian
University of Delhi
[email protected]
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
What is it?
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.
Introduction to citation analysis
Citation Analysis - Why use it?
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.
Introduction to citation analysis
Definition of citation index:
”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”.
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 - 1970 to present

Social Sciences Citation Index - 1970 to present






Arts & Humanities Citation Index - 1975 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 2004. 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 1960.

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
Measuring Research Output
Thanks