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Defining 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.
Why use it?
- To find out how much impact a particular article has had by showing which 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 the number of times his/her work has been cited by others.
Comparing Tools for Citation Analysis
Comparing Citation Analysis Sources
Here is a quick summary of what to expect from the three best known citation analysis tools.
| Web of Science | Scopus | Google Scholar | |
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| Subject Focus |
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Theoretically, all disciplines |
| Coverage |
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| Time Span | Some journals from 1900 | Some journals from the 1820s | Some citations as far back as the 1660s and 1670s |
| Updated | Weekly | Daily | Unknown but generally quick |
| Strengths |
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| Weaknesses |
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