Impact of Research and Scholarly Works: Citation Analysis (Article Impact)

Citation analysis (or citation tracking) helps you determine who is citing whom. Articles, books, and other resources an author cites in a bibliography can be valuable research leads. Learning who has cited a specific article can also be useful. Determining the number of times an article has been cited also indicates if the article is widely read and perhaps well-respected in the field.

Sometimes it's difficult to determine which articles were written by a specific person. For example, some authors only publish with their first initial and last name (imagine how many J. Smiths are out there!), other people may have changed their name.

One of the easiest ways to deal with this is to find an article that is *definitely* by an author (perhaps an article the person is famous for or one on their favorite topic of research). Find the article's record in a database. Authors' names will usually appear as hyperlinks. Click on an author's name to find more articles by that same author.

Another important thing to know is that each author's name is not always cited the same way. Write down exactly how your author's name appears in the database links (e.g. J. Brown Smith vs. J.B. Smith vs. Joe Brown Smith vs. Joe B. Smith vs. Joe Smith).

• Google Scholar is most effective when searching for cites of a particular piece of writing, following these steps:
  • Go to Advanced Search by clicking on the three bars in the upper left and then clicking on Advanced Search.
  • Put the title of the book or article in the "exact phrase" search box
  • Type in the authors last name in the "with at least one of the words" search box.
  • On the results page underneath the article, there will be a "Cited by (number), click on it. Note that Google Scholar also retrieves citations from JSTOR.

ProQuest Databases: Change search from being limited to "Anywhere" to being limited to "References, RE=" Search name you wish to locate in References in this format: "Smith, A." OR when looking at an article, click on "Cited By" on the right (if the article has been cited).

Examples of ProQuest Databases

EBSCO Complete Databases: Click on "Cited References" on the left side of the page when viewing an article's entry.

Examples of EBSCO Databases