The principles and design of

citation indexes
 In the words of Weinstock (1971, 16): “a citation index is
a structured list of all the citations in a given collection
of documents. Such lists are usually arranged so that
the cited document is followed by the citing documents”.
 McVeigh (2017, 941) explains that “a true citation index
has two aspects [or parts] - a defined source index and a
standardized/unified cited reference index”.
Terminology used in describing citation
indexing
 Citation: An entry in a bibliography or footnote that
refers to an earlier work of some kind. Also frequently
called a "reference".
 Cited Reference: The same as a citation. An entry in a
bibliography or footnote describing an earlier work.
 Citing Reference: The work in which a cited reference
appears. This is what you're really searching for when
you use a citation index to look forward in the
literature.
Source Index and Cited Reference Index
The cited article is identified as the reference
and the citing article as the source.
General-purpose academic citation indexes
 Web of Science by Clarivate Analytics (previously the
Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson
Reuters)
 Scopus by Elsevier, available online only, which similarly
combines subject searching with citation browsing and
tracking in the sciences and social sciences.
 CiteSeer and Google Scholar are freely available online.
 Several open-access, subject-specific citation indexing
services also exist, such as:
 INSPIRE-HEP which covers high energy physics,
 PubMed, which covers life sciences and biomedical
topics, and
 Astrophysics Data System which covers astronomy and
physics.
Top list of academic research databases
 Scopus: one of the two big commercial,
bibliographic databases that cover scholarly
literature from almost any discipline.
 Web of Science: also known as Web of Knowledge
is the second big bibliographic database.
 PubMed: the number one resource for anyone
looking for literature in medicine or biological
science.
 ERIC: ERIC stands for Education Resources
Information Center, and is a database that
specifically hosts education-related literature.
Top list of academic research databases
 IEEE Xplore: the leading academic database in the
field of engineering and computer science.
 ScienceDirect: the gateway to the millions of
academic articles published by Elsevier.
 Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): very
special academic database since all the articles
indexed are open access and can be accessed freely
of charge.
 JSTOR: another great resource to find research
papers. Any article published before 1924 in the
United States is available for free and JSTOR also
offers scholarships for independent researchers.
What is Web of Science?
Web of Science is a platform consisting of several literature
search databases designed to support scientific and scholarly
research.
Databases covered
Citation Indexes:
 Web of Science Core Collection
 BIOSIS Citation Index
 Chinese Science Citation Database
Citation Indexes:
 Data Citation Index
 Science Citation Index
 Russian Science Citation Index
 Social Sciences Citation
 SciELO Citation Index
Index
Subject specialized and regional indexes:
 Arts & Humanities
 Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews
Citation Index
 CABI: CAB Abstracts and Global Health
 Conference Proceedings
 FSTA—the food science resource
Citation Index
 Inspec
 Book Citation Index
 KCI—Korean Journal Database
 Emerging Sources
 Medline
Citation Index
 Zoological Record
Other resources:
 Current Contents Connect
 Derwent Innovations Index (Patents)
Web of Science Core Collection
 A rich collection of citation indexes representing
the citation connections between scholarly
research articles found in the most globally
significant journals, books, and proceedings in the
sciences, social sciences and art & humanities.
 18,200 journals + books and conference
proceedings
 Contents:
 Life sciences, biomedical sciences, engineering, social
sciences, arts & humanities.
 Strongest coverage of natural sciences, health sciences,
engineering, computer science, materials sciences
Web of Science Platform
 A platform providing access to multidisciplinary
and regional citation indexes; specialist subject
indexes; a patent family index; and an index to
scientific data sets.
 32,800 journals + books, proceedings, patents, and
data sets
 Contents:
 Biomedical sciences, natural sciences, engineering,
social sciences, arts & humanities.
 Strongest coverage of natural sciences & engineering,
computer science, materials sciences, patents, data sets.
Scopus Content at a Glance

Scopus indexes content from 24,600 active titles and 5,000

publishers—all rigorously vetted and selected by an
independent review board. Users get access to thousands of
titles, millions of author profiles, and billions of cited
references.
Scopus content coverage by subject area
SCOPUS INCLUDES
75+ million records
 68 million post-1970 records,
including references
 6.5+ million pre-1970 records going
back as far as 1788
 8.5+ million Open Access articles
 9+ million Conference papers
24,600+ active titles
 23,500+ peer-reviewed journals, of
which more than 4,000 are Gold
Open Access
 740+ book series
 300+ trade publications
 Articles-in-press (i.e., articles that have been accepted for publication) from over
8,000 titles
194,000+ books
 Including monographs, edited volumes, major reference works and graduate level
text books
 Focuses on social sciences and arts & humanities, but also includes science,
technology & medicine (STM)
Why choose Scopus?
 Identify emerging trends:
 What are the latest research areas?
 Who are the leading experts?
 Are you uncovering the full breadth of cutting edge
research?
 Scopus has the comprehensive scientific data and
literature, and analytical tools to keep you up to date and
ahead of the competition.
 Enhance visibility:
 Scopus fosters the easy discovery of research and enables
researchers to claim their work, ensuring proper
accreditation and supporting career development.
Why choose Scopus?
 Foster collaboration:
 Scopus supports collaboration by highlighting the work
of key contributors and external experts based on your
searches, so you can connect with others to advance your
science.
 Support funding:
 With its broad scientific research coverage, Scopus
enables researchers to submit comprehensive
applications, improving the odds of obtaining critical
funding.
 Empower your organization:
 Scopus empowers organizations with unparalleled
access to critical global research and easy integration
with existing platforms to increase efficiency.
What is Google Scholar?
 A Web search engine that specifically searches
scholarly literature and academic resources
 Provides a simple way to broadly search for
scholarly literature.
 Can search across many disciplines and sources:
articles, theses, books, abstracts and court
opinions, from academic publishers, professional
societies, online repositories, universities and
other web sites.
 Helps you find relevant work across the world of
scholarly research.
Features of Google Scholar
 Search all scholarly literature from one convenient
place
 Explore related works, citations, authors, and
publications
 Locate the complete document through your library or
on the web
 Keep up with recent developments in any area of
research
 Check who's citing your publications, create a public
author profile
 PubMed
 A free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE
database of references and abstracts on life sciences and
biomedical topics.
 In addition to MEDLINE, PubMed provides access to:
 older references from the print version of Index Medicus,
back to 1951 and earlier
 references to some journals before they were indexed in
Index Medicus and MEDLINE, for instance Science, BMJ,
and Annals of Surgery
 very recent entries to records for an article before it is
indexed with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and added
to MEDLINE
 a collection of books available full-text and other subsets of
NLM records
 PMC citations
 NCBI Bookshelf
What is Impact Factor?
 A measure of the frequency with which the average
article in a journal has been cited in a specific year.
 Used to measure the importance or rank of a
journal by calculating the times its articles are
cited.
 Considered the number one ranking value for
scientific journals.
 A benchmark of a journal’s reputation and reflect
how frequently peer-reviewed journals are cited by
other researchers in a particular year.
 Helps to evaluate a journal’s relative importance,
especially when compared with others in the same
field.
Calculation of Impact Factor
 In any given year, the impact factor of a journal is the
number of citations, received in that year, of articles
published in that journal during the two preceding years,
divided by the total number of articles published in that
journal during the two preceding years
Citations y 1 Citations y 2
IFy
Publications y 1 Publications y 2

 For example, Nature had an impact factor of 41.456 in 2014:

Citations2013 Citations2012 29753 41924
IF2014 41.456
Publications2013 Publications2012 860 869
 On average, its papers published in 2012 and 2013 received
roughly 41 citations each in 2014. 2014 impact factors are
reported in 2015; they cannot be calculated until all of the
2014 publications have been processed by the indexing
agency.
 Journal Impact
Factor

The impact factor of an academic journal is a measure

reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles
published in that specific journal. It is often used as a metric
for the relative importance and/or impact of a journal within its
field. Journals with higher impact factors are therefore noted to
be more important and influential than those with lower
impact factors.
Use of Impact Factor
 Journal impact factors are often used to evaluate the merit
of individual articles and individual researchers.
 Impact Factor is not a perfect tool to measure the quality
of articles but there is nothing better and it has the
advantage of already being in existence and is, therefore, a
good technique for scientific evaluation.
 In each specialty the best journals are those in which it is
most difficult to have an article accepted, and these are
the journals that have a high impact factor.
 Prestigious journals publish papers of high level.
Therefore, their impact factor is high, and not the
contrary.
What is a good journal impact factor?
 There is no good score that shows the quality of a
journal because the IF varies significantly among
discipline, field, and topics.
 If you start analysing what is a good journal impact
factor, then, you should keep this thought in mind.
“It is something better than nothing”.
 So, having impact factor of 1 is always better than
having no impact factor.
 There is nothing like high impact factor. It is just a
basic correlation measure on the number of
publications and citations for the articles in the
journal.
What is a citation and citation style?
 A citation is a way of giving credit to individuals
for their creative and intellectual works that you
utilized to support your research.
 It can also be used to locate particular sources and
combat plagiarism.
 Typically, a citation can include the author's name,
date, location of the publishing company, journal
title, or DOI (Digital Object Identifer).
 A citation style dictates the information necessary
for a citation and how the information is ordered,
as well as punctuation and other formatting.
Ways to Measure Impact
 h-index: The h-index is an index to quantify an
individual’s scientific research output (J.E. Hirsch).
 There are several databases (Web of Science, Scopus,
and Google Scholar) that will provide an h-index for an
individual based on publications indexed in the tools.
 Find about more about these tools and how to use them
by clicking the Find Your H-index tab.
What is peer review?
 Reviewers play a pivotal role in scholarly
publishing.
 The peer review system exists to validate academic
work, helps to improve the quality of published
research, and increases networking possibilities
within research communities.
 Types of peer review:
 Single blind review: the names of the reviewers are
hidden from the author
 Double-blind review: Both the reviewer and the author
are anonymous in this model.
 Triple-blind review: Reviewers are anonymous and the
author's identity is unknown to both the reviewers and
the editor.
The peer review process
Quick Tips for Journal Selection
 Make a List of the Journals Available
 Identify where a journal is indexed. Is the journal Scopus
indexed?
 Determine the Impact of the Journal: What is the impact factor?
 Are articles peer-reviewed? Collect Information about the
Journal's Peer Review Process
 Does the subject matter covered in the journal match your
domain? Make Sure the Journal Scope and Policies match your
Needs
 Does the journal have an ISSN, and do articles have DOIs?
 Check the “Instructions for Authors” thoroughly
 What is the typical time frame from submission to publication?