Citation Indexes:Finding the best journals and articles

http:// unihub.mdx.ac.uk / study / library

Citation indexes enable you to...• Find which articles have cited an earlier article eg. if you have

found an excellent article, you can see which articles have subsequently cited it

• Find articles on a similar or related subject ie. If an article has cited another article, a subject relationship is implied. It is therefore possible to find papers on a similar topic without using keywords or subject terms

• Find out how many times a paper has been cited ie. gauge the usefulness/quality of a paper

• Find the best journals in your field (Journal Citation Reports) ie. citation data is used to rank journals, so are a useful way of seeing how journals perform in relation to others in the same subject area

Use Web of Science to find citation information

Web of Science……• Access to the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences,

arts, and humanities and proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions

• Web of Science includes:

• Science Citation Index Expanded (1970-present)

• Social Sciences Citation Index (1970-present)

• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present)

• Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (1990-present)

• Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (1990-present)

• You can:

• Create a visual representation of citation relationships with Citation Mapping

• Capture citation activity and trends graphically with Citation Report

• Use the Analyze Tool to identify trends and patterns

• Web of Science is part of Web of Knowledge which includes Journal Citation Reports (more later)

Accessing resources (students)MyUniHub > MyStudy > MyLibrary > Databases > W > Web of Knowledge > Web of Science

Accessing resources (staff)MyUniHub > MyUniversity > MyLibrary > Databases > W > Web of Knowledge > Web of Science

Accessing Web of Science

Enter your search terms into the search box…

You can refine your search by date.

Your search will be across all the databases within Web of Science. However it is possible to restrict the search to a specific database by clicking on ‘More settings’.

Your search results are displayed

Click on the article title for more detail plus article impact information (more info later)

Refine search results by document type, author, date etc

Create a citation report for the subject you have searched ie. which articles have had the most impact in the subject you are researching (more info on next slide).

Citation report for subject searched

This is the subject we originally searched ie. Human computer interaction

The references are listed here….

You can change how the references are ordered using the drop-down menu. ‘Times cited- highest to lowest’ will tell you which article has had the greatest impact in this subject areaThe references are listed on

the left, and citation statistics on the right….

To find an article’s impact….

…. and then create ‘View Citation Map’

….click on an article title in your list of references….

Citation maps provide details of what has been cited in the original article, and which articles have cited it subsequently

Other things you can do….Create ‘Citation Alert’ and receive an email when someone cites this article

You can also view the impact of a journal

When you have found an article, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Journal Citation Report’

It is possible to create a Journal Citation Report for a subject area

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are:

• Systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world’s leading journals

• Quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing and comparing journals

• Published by Thomson Reuters using data collected by Web of Science

• Divided into 2 fields: Science (7,200 + titles) and Social Sciences (2,100+ titles)

• Demonstrate most frequently cited journal in a field & highest impact journal

• Data published annually for previous year

• JCR distils citation trend data for 10,000+ journals from 25 million+ cited references indexed by Thomson Reuters every year

• JCR training from Thomson Reuters:

http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/training/jcr/#recorded_training

Creating a Journal Citation Report

Select either the

…..then select one or more subjects from the list and ‘Submit’

...select either the Science or Social Sciences edition, the year required, and ‘subject category’. Then click on ‘Submit’…..

Click on ‘Journal Citation Reports’ on the home screen...

This is the Journal Citation Report

Impact statistics for individual journals are displayed here. More info on next slides.

Journal titles are listed here

The report shows which journals have the most impact in a given subject area. This example shows influential journals in the subject of ‘Information Systems’

Ways of measuring impact

• Total cites

• Impact factor

• 5 year impact factor

• Immediacy Index

• Articles

• Cited half-life

• Eigenfactor Score

• Article Influence Score

More information on next slides………

Total cites: Total number of citations to the journal in a year.

Impact Factor: Average number of times that articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in a year.

Calculated by dividing the number of citations in the year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years.

The citing articles may be articles published in the same journal. However, most citing works are from different journals, proceedings, or books indexed by Web of Science.

Ways of measuring impact continued…

5 year impact factor: average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in a year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in a year by the total number of articles published in the five previous years.

Immediacy Index: average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published and indicates how quickly articles in a journal are cited.

Calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year. Useful for comparing journals specializing in cutting-edge research.

Ways of measuring impact continued…

Articles: total number of articles in the journal in a year.

(Journal) Cited half-life: the median age of the articles that were cited by other journals during the JCR year. Half of a journal's cited articles were published more recently than the cited half-life.

For example, in JCR 2003, the journal Food Biotechnology has a citing half-life of 9.0. That means that 50% of all articles cited by articles in Food Biotechnology in 2003 were published between 1995 and 2003 (inclusive).

Only journals that publish 100 or more cited references have a citing half-life. A higher or lower cited half-life does not imply any particular value for a journal, but figures may be useful to assist in collection management.

Ways of measuring impact continued…

Eigenfactor Score: calculation is based on the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the year, but it also considers which journals have contributed these citations so that highly cited journals will influence the network more than lesser cited journals. 

References from one article in a journal to another article from the same journal are removed, so that Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by journal self-citation.

Ways of measuring impact continued…

Article Influence Score: determines the average influence of a journal's articles over the first five years after publication. 

It is calculated by dividing a journal’s Eigenfactor Score by the number of articles in the journal, so that it is a ratio of a journal’s citation influence to the size of the journal’s article contribution over a period of five years.

The mean Article Influence Score is 1.00. A score greater than 1.00 indicates that each article in the journal has above-average influence. A score less than 1.00 indicates that each article in the journal has below-average influence.

Ways of measuring impact continued…

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