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Citation Tracking

How to track citations

Web of Science

The Web of Science is one of the standard tools for tracking citations. It includes a number of citation indexes for the purpose. They are the:

  • Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED).
  • Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI).
  • CPCI — Science (CPCI-S).
  • CPCI — Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH).

The two CPCI indexes are particularly useful as they cover citations of Conference Proceedings, which are difficult to track in any other way.

Getting started with Web of Science

To search Web of Science, you need to go to Web of Knowledge platform. Follow these steps:

  • Go to Web of Knowledge.
  • Enter your UNE username and password if prompted.
  • Click on the Web of Science tab.
  • Click on the Cited Reference Search link.

Now you only need to enter the details of your search.

For practice, let's find the authors who have cited the following journal article:

J R Petit, J Jouzel and D Raynaud, et al. (1999) "Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica" Nature, 399 (6735): 429-436.

To find articles which have cited this article, follow these steps:

  • Enter the name of the first author (in this case J R Petit) in the first search box. Web of Science expects the author's name to follow the format: Petit J* (using * means that you will find all authors with last name Petit and the first initial J, including those who have second initials).
  • Enter the standard abbreviation for the journal In the second search box. In this case the abbreviation is nature. If you don't know the correct abbreviation, click on the journal abbreviations link.
  • Enter the year in which the article was published (1999) in the Cited Year(s) box.
  • Click on the Search button.

Web of Science presents you with a list of matching articles. Note that there are sometimes a number of different citations. These are usually the results of minor citation errors by article authors.

Click in the check boxes next to the matching citations and then click on theFinish Search button.

Web of Science will present you with a complete list of articles which cite the original article.

Limitations of Web of Science

Although Web of Science is often the best place to begin tracking citations, this source has significant limitations. These include:

  • coverage is heavily biased in favour of English-language journals. If a foreign-language journal does not provide a summary of its article contents in English, Web of Science simply omits the journal from its database.
  • coverage outside science, technology and medicine is extremely thin.
  • misspellings of author names and incorrect citations are common. This makes it difficult to be certain that there are no missing citations.
  • coverage outside of the US (other than for the UK and the Netherlands) is extremely limited.

Many researchers have turned to Scopus and Google Scholar as an alternative to Web of Science.

​Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers citation totals for journal articles and other items in its database. If an article in Google Scholar has been cited by another source, a Cited by link will appear below the article entry in Scholar's search results. Clicking the Cited by link will display a list of articles that have cited the original article. As many of these articles are also likely to display a Cited by link, this process can be repeated many times.

Other citation sources

A number of specialised indexes can assist you to discover who is citing whom. These include:

  • ERIC: If an article has been cited by another article in the ERIC, ERIC will display this information in the original article record. Click on the Cited bylink.
  • HighWire:HighWire informs you if an article in its database has been cited by one or more other HighWire articles.
  • HeinOnline: This source now has cited by features to indicate articles that have been cited in other articles. For further information, see the online guide.
  • JSTOR. JSTOR notes when an article has been cited by other articles in the JSTOR database. Look for a tab reading Items Citing this Item on the Article Information page. JSTOR also allows you to check for citations in the GoogleScholar database.
  • ProQuest. A number of databases previously available through CSA (including ERIC) are now in Proquest. They provide lists of references used by an article and how often a particular reference has been cited by other articles in the same database. In addition to ERIC, these databases include Biological Sciences, EconLit, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA), Physical Education Index, PILOTS Database, PsycINFO, Social Services Abstracts and Sociological Abstracts.
  • ScienceDirect. Article abstracts in ScienceDirect frequently include provide totals of citing articles derived from Scopus.
  • SpringerLink. Citing articles are displayed in the article abstract under Cited by..
  • Wiley Online Library: Click on Cited by in the article abstract to discover a list of citing articles.

No citation index will give you a complete citation count. By searching a number of indexes you can gain a better idea of the actual number of authors citing a particular article.

Retrieved from http://www.une.edu.au/library/support/library-classes?a=10524, September 21, 2017