Scholarly Impact and Citation Analysis

This guide provides information on resources and research methods involved in conducting citation analysis. Use the tabs above to identify and compare relevant tools and to obtain step-by-step directions on how to find citing articles, impact factors, and journal rankings.

Document your research impact

• Find out citation counts and who is citing your work with Cited Reference Search.
• Determine the impact factors and rankings of the journals in which you've published with Journal Rankings.
• Monitor downloads, views, and discussion of your work on social media using Altmetrics

Consult the Metrics tab for detailed explanations of terms related to citation counts and journal rankings.  For more information about citation analysis, a list of recommended readings is available.

There are steps you can take to improve your citation metrics.

• Be consistent in the way you use your name as an author
• Monitor and manage your author profiles in SCOPUS, Google Scholar, and Web of Science to be sure all your papers are included
  • If you have a compound name, make sure the database enters it correctly
  • If you have a common name, create profiles in the databases to record your publications
  • Make your profile public (Google Scholar Citations) so that others can see your publications
• Register your author profiles in ORCID
• Publish in journals that are covered by indexing services and Google Scholar
• Publish in open access journals or grant open access rights (when available) to make your work accessible to those without subscriptions
• Deposit a copy of your work in the OSU Knowledge Bank or other authorized repository to increase visibility

Setting up a researcher profile and/or researcher ID can be useful to

• link all of your publications together 
• group any name variations under which you have published 
• group institutions where you have worked. 
• differentiate between authors with similar names
• improve researcher impact
• assist with metrics such as citation counts and h-indexes
• promote your research

There are several services that offer similar products.  Because the profile may be linked to a specific database, the publication history may be incomplete. It may be desirable to have multiple profiles.

Want to keep up with who is citing your work?  Many databases and information resources let you set up an alert to notify you when an article has been cited.  In most cases, you will need to set up an account to use the service.  Here are a few examples of databases with citation alerts.

Web of Science.  

1.  Perform a search in one of the Web of Knowledge citation database products (such as Web of Science). 
2.  When viewing a Full Record, click the "Create Citation Alert" button 
3. Alerts are active for one year and may be renewed.

Scopus. 

On the Document details page, click Set alert in the Cited by since 1996 box.

The Add a Document Citation Alert page appears.

1. Enter a name for the alert in the Name of alert field.
2. Enter the email address to which alerts should be sent in the E-mail address field.
3. From the Frequency list, select how often you want to receive the alert.
4. Select either HTML or Text email format for your alert.
5. Select Active or Inactive as the status of your alert.
6. Click Save to save the alert.

Google Scholar

1. Locate the article you want to track by searching Google Scholar.
2. Click on "Cited by" link following article citation.
3. Click on "create alert" from display of citing articles.
4. Enter your email address to receive the alerts

Thanks and acknowledgement go to Francine DeFranco, University of Connecticut Libraries, for permission to use her guide, "Citation Analysis for Promotion and Tenure" as a basis for this one.