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Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis

Overview of h-index, Eigenfactor, Impact Factor (IF), Journal Citation Reports, Citation Analysis, and other tools.

About Citation Analysis

What is Citation Analysis?

The process whereby the impact or "quality" of an article is assessed by counting the number of times other authors mention it in their work.

Citation analysis invovles counting the number of times an article is cited by other works to measure the impact of a publicaton or author.  The caviat however, there is no single citation analysis tools that collects all publications and their cited references.  For a thorough analysis of the impact of an author or a publication, one needs to look in multiple databases to find all possible cited references. A number of resources are available at UIC that identify cited works including: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and other databases with limited citation data.

Citation Analysis - Why use it?

To find out how much impact a particular article or author has had, by showing which other authors cited the work within their own papers.  The H-Index is one specific method utilizing citation analysis to determine an individuals impact.

Citation Analysis

Web of Science

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It indexes over 10,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.

  • To find the citation counts to your own articles:
    • Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).  
    • Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right.
    • To ensure accuracy for popular names, enter Univ Illinois in the middle search box, then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.  (You might have to add the second search box by clicking "add another field" before you enter the address)
    • Click on Search
    • a list of publications by that author name will appear.   To the right of each citation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.   Click the number next to "times cited" to view the articles that have cited your article

Scopus

Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it (limited to article written in 1996 and after).   It indexes over 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers across the disciplines.

 

  • To find the citation counts to your own articles:
    • Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
    • Enter the name of the author in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first and/or middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.). 
    • To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the affiliation field.  
    • Click search.
      • If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining). 
    • Once you click on the author's profile, a list of the publications will appear and to the right of each ctation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.  
    • Click the number to view the articles that have cited your article

 Dimensions (UIC does not subscribe but parts are free to use)

  • Indexes over 28000 journals
  • Does not display h-index in Dimensions but can calculate or if faculty, look in MyActivities
  • Includes Altmetrics score

Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides citation counts for articles found within Google Scholar.  Depending on the discipline and cited article, it may find more cited references than Web of Science or Scopus because overall, Google Scholar is indexing more journals and more publication types than other databases. Google Scholar is not specific about what is included in its tool but information is available on how Google obtains its content.   Limiting searches to only publications by a specific author name is complicated in Google Scholar.  Using Google Scholar Citations and creating your own profile will make it easy for you to create a list of publications included in Google Scholar.   Using your Google Scholar Citations account, you can see the citation counts for your publications and have GS calculate your h-index.  (You can also search Google Scholar by author name and the title of an article to retrieve citation information for a specific article.)

 

  • To set up a Google Scholar Citation account:
    • Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the scrren to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.

Try Harzing's Publish or Perish Tool in order to more selectively examine published works by a specific author.

Databases containing limited citation counts:

About the H-index

The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output (J.E. Hirsch)  
The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist. The index is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications (Wikipedia)  A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have at most h citations each.

Find your h-index at:

Find Your H-Index

Below are instructions for obtaining your h-index from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.

Web of Science

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It indexes over 12,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.  To find an author's h-index in WOS:

  • Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).   Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right.
    • To ensure accuracy for popular names, add an additional search box and enter "Univ Illinois" and then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.
  • Click on Search
  • Click on Citation Report on the right hand corner of the results page.  The H-index is on the right of the screen.
 
Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it (limited to article written in 1996 and after).   It indexes over 22,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers across the disciplines.  To find an author's h-index in Scopus:
  • Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
  • Enter the name of the author in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first and/or middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.). 
  • To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the affiliation field.  
  • Click search.
    • If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining).  Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed.
    • If you have worked at more than one place, your name may appear twice with 2 separate h-index ratings.  Select the check box next to each relevent profile, and click show documents.

 Google Scholar

  • Google Scholar Citations​
    • Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the screen to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.
    • See Albert Einstein's

 

  • Harzing’s Publish or Perish (POP) 
  • Publish or Perish Searches Google Scholar.  After searching by your name, deselect from the list of articles retrieved those that you did not author.  Your h-index will appear at the top of the tool.  Note:This tool must be downloaded to use