Published by: Sentsuthung Odyuo

Research Scholar, Department of Social work & sociology

Christ University, Bangalore

Trends in Research publication: Conceptualizing the idea of citation indexing

for Research Scholars

Background
The prestige of any journal is considered by how many abstracting and indexing services cover
that journal. It has been observed in the last few years that authors have started searching for
indexed journals to publish their articles. Probably this is happening because it has become a
mandatory requirement for further promotions of teaching faculty (Dhammi and Ul Haq 2016),
having to Indexed journals, they are usually considered to be of higher scientific quality as
compared to non-indexed journals. This, however, has become a trend, keeping aside the essence
of being indexed. Beginning in the mid 20th century, indexing sought to claim its popularity,
over the years the concept of citation indexing grew to a larger context among different writers
and authors. The study will seek to underline the concept of citation indexing in explaining the
process that is required for research scholars to attain an idea of how it has evolved to be a
source of importance in research publication​.

Introduction
Because of the ongoing development of an increase in scientific research and literature, there has
been an intensive growth in the service of citation indexing. Citation is generally understood as
the process of acknowledging or citing the author, year, title, and locus of publication (journal,
book, or other) of a source used in a published work. Citation index breaks down the connection
between different parts of references, for example, its source of publication, editors, reviewers,
and authors​. ​Citations are the formal, explicit linkages between papers that have particular points
in common. A citation index is built around these linkages. It lists publications that have been
cited and identifies the sources of the citations. Anyone conducting a literature search can find
from one to dozens of additional papers on a subject just by knowing one that has been cited.

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And every paper that is found provides a list of new citations with which to continue the search.
The simplicity of citation indexing is one of its main strengths (Garfield 1979).
Library studies and Information technology (2019) states that “​a citation index is an ordered list
of cited articles along with a list of citing articles. The cited article is identified as the reference
and the citing article as the source. The index is prepared to utilize the association of ideas
existing between the cited and the citing articles, as the fact is that whenever a recent paper cites
a previous paper there always exists a relation of ideas, between the two papers”.
Web of science“Citations are the formal, explicit linkages between papers that have particular
points in common. A citation index is built around these linkages. It lists publications that have
been cited and identifies the sources of the citations. Anyone conducting a literature search can
find from one to dozens of additional papers on a subject just by knowing one that has been
cited”. ​Researchers, funding agents, promotion and tenure committees, and others have used
citation index measures to ascertain the quantity and quality of the impact of articles and authors
as well as to explore the topical and social structure of scientific communities ​(Shiffrin & Borner
2004).

History
The history of citation indexing can be traced back from the times of the Hebrew writings, but it
is not prominently studied until the 20th century​. ​The concept of citation indexing evolved with
such a significant number of different turns in the history of research and sciences while
perceiving that the estimation of data is controlled by the individuals who use it, the approach to
quantify the nature of the work by estimating the effect it makes subsequently
Walimbe & Gurpur (2017) states that Citation indexing began in the 1950s, and has long been
dominated by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, which was acquired by and is now
renamed Thomson Reuters). Garfield proposed an index of Impact Factor (IF), which was then
chosen by the Science Citation Index (SCI) in 1960 as a means to specify the influence and by
extension, the value of the indexed journals (Andrew 2003). In 1960, Eugene Garfield's ​Institute
for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index for papers published in
academic journals​, first the ​Science Citation Index (SCI), and later the ​Social Sciences Citation

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Index (SSCI) and the ​Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). The first automated citation
indexing was done by ​CiteSeer in 1997. Other sources for such data include ​Google Scholar and
Elsevier's ​Scopus​. ​Science Citation Index (SCI). Available for purchase since 1963, the SCI then
and now represents the most comprehensive citation index to the scientific journal literature (
Web of Science/WOB).

Concept of Citation Indexing

Weinstock(1971) highlighted that ​Citation indexing is based on the simple concept that an
author’s references to previously recorded information identify much of the earlier work that is
pertinent to the subject of his present document. These references are commonly called citations,
and 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.
Quint (2006) ​Indexing depth is the primary quantitative measure of search effectiveness. Larger
the number of indexing terms used, more is the detailed description and search effectiveness.
Scientific journals explore the realm of logical work that enhances specialists to distribute their
work into systematic discoveries relating to different areas, which further will impact researchers
to investigate in different territories. The Journal Citation Reports provides a pointer of research
significance and a device that inquires to yield an assessment of a scientist and establishment.
Following and tracing citations in various distributions need a steady examination, which can be
fairly hard, especially for writers who are new to the concept. The mapping of references in a
subject is furthermore in unified subjects which can be quite perplexing, to envision reference
connections and comprehend the importance of a referred work. Walimbe & Gurpur (2017)
“Citation indexes track references that authors put in the bibliographies of published papers.
They provide a way to search for and analyze the literature in a way not possible through simple
keyword/topical searching. It also enables users to gather data on the "impact" of journals, as
well as assessing particular areas of research activity and publication”. New World
Encyclopedia(2017) gave a concept that ​while citation indexes were originally designed for
information retrieval purposes, they are increasingly used for bibliometrics and other studies
involving research evaluation and that citation data is also the basis of the popular journal impact

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factor. There is a large body of literature on citation analysis, sometimes called scientometrics, a
term invented by Vasily Nalimov, or more specifically bibliometrics.
Adams(1987) states that ​users of the citation indexes are not only individuals who know the
research field by scholars' names but individuals who have located one good article and need
more on the topic. If a library's users focus on interdisciplinary research, this reference tool is
recommended. ​Walimbe & Gurpur (2017) states that the Citation index needs to be upgraded
from time-to-time by creating and designing it for specific subjects using the latest technology
and manual effort. “Every citation represents a decision by one author that he wishes to draw
attention to the work of another as being relevant to his theme at a particular point in the
document he is writing. That definition leads to many of the factors to be considered, revealing
that each citation comes from a pool of citable items and the sizes of the pools represent the
denominator’s incorrect statements of the units counted” Sansison & Alexander (1989).
“Citation indexes resolve semantic problems associated with traditional subject indexes by using
citation symbology rather than words to describe the content of a document” (Weinstock 1971).
Web of Science(WOB), “Citation indexing is employed, which is enhanced by the capability to
search for results across disciplines. The influence, impact, history, and methodology of an idea
can be followed from its first instance, notice, or referral to the present day.” ​Adams(1987) The
theory of citation indexing holds that the references in an article are closely linked to the
intellectual content of that article and, therefore, lead to further sources on the topic.

Indexing services
It cannot be ascertained which indexation is more accurate and prevalent, and the process to how
indexing is being indexed in different services is a concern, it is notable that indexing has
become prominent, in the context of India, for research scholars under UGC norms, scholars are
mandatorily asked to published an article which has Scopus index, this shows that Scopus is
given more preference over other, the reason how/why couldn’t be brought into the study,
similarly different institutions follow different indexing based on their preferences. ​The Institute
for Scientific Information (ISI) produces multidisciplinary citation indexes. One is the Science

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Citation(SCI), intended to be a practical, cost-effective tool for indexing the significant scientific
journals. The ISI databases are valuable and useful tools.
New World Encyclopedia(2017) There are two publishers of general-purpose academic citation
indexes, available to libraries by subscription. There are a number of indexes(table 1), more
readily available.
Table 1. Indexing services

1. Web of Science 11. Scholar Stee​r

2. Scopus 12. Ulrich's International Periodical

Directory

3. Google Scholar 13. Genamics Journal Seek

4. CiteSeer 14. Open J Gate

5. ProQuest 15. Registry of Open Access

Repositories

6. RePEc 16. Primo Central,

7. Index Copernicus 17. African Journals On Line (AJOL)

8. SIIC database 18. BASE

9. DOAJ 19. The CLOCKSS Archive

10. Expanded Academic ASAP 20. Open Academic Journals Index

(OAJI)

The above table represents(only) some of the prominent indexing services.

The reason citation indexes provide multidisciplinary searching capabilities is, once again,
related to the fact that most indexers are not as qualified as the author himself to decide which

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previously published material is related to his current work. A citation index takes advantage of
the built-in linkages between documents provided by authors’ citations by listing together with
all items with common citations (Weinstock 1971). “The ability to search back and forth in time
from the past literature to the current literature, to identify cross-disciplinary developments, to
eliminate the search restrictions and complexity imposed by semantic problems, and to provide
an in-depth index to the literature within a practical time and cost framework have all proved to
be as significant in practice as they appear to be in theory….Citation indexing has come to play
an important role in current-awareness services, library management, and studies of the policies,
history, and literature of science” Garfield (1979)

Analysis
Citation indexing plays a vital role in the scholarly journey, it has the capability of being
mechanized to an enormous degree. Citation indexing enacts the idea of semantic differences. It
mechanizes the gap that has hindrances in languages. Citation indexing solves the depth versus
cost problem by substituting the authors’ citations for the indexer’s judgments. This approach
has the advantage of eliminating the need for intellectual indexing. An important strength of
indexing is search effectiveness, its quality has two components. One is search productivity,
which is concerned with finding the largest possible number of relevant papers. The other is
search efficiency, which is concerned with minimizing the number of irrelevant papers the
searcher must check out to identify the relevant ones. Garfield(1967) “ The traditional
philosophy of indexing system design implies that individual documents can be treated as though
they were independent entities. This basic fallacy not only results in the loss of important
informational links, but it is basically inefficient.” the author also states that “Citations display
all the properties of word indexing terms because citations are, in fact, alternative and usually
unambiguous symbols for concepts traditionally codified by headings”.
Increased awareness of the usefulness of citation indexing as a tool for retrieval and evaluation
will make this aspect of refereeing more important, and what now passes for minor carelessness
or discourtesy could easily come to be regarded as serious malpractice. ​(Margolis 1967). The
citation is a precise, unambiguous representation of a subject that requires no interpretation and

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is immune to changes in terminology. In addition, the citation will retain its precision over time.
It also can be used in documents written in different languages. (Garfield,1979). Taking an
instance, A is searching the 2010 ​Proquest subject index for information on the effect of gender
discrimination, for a starter, the term gender will signify to overview a particular term that would
create a list of hundreds of papers organized under a variety of its specific subheadings. The
subheadings will further be activated for a subject result, and the most popular would be (gender
inequality and discrimination). The Articles that appeared on search engines would have to read
the titles of all that is shown to identify the most relevant ones to further narrow down to what is
being searched. On the other hand, a search of a 2012 citation index on “Equality, Protection or
Discrimination, 271, 272, 2012” would lead, in a single step, to a list of several papers. Because
they had all cited a paper on “gender equality and discrimination,” this precise subject of the
search is likely to contain a high percentage of relevant material. A citation-index search can
start at any point in time at which a pertinent paper on the subject was published. If that paper
was cited during the year covered by the index, the searcher will be brought back to the most
recent information. Then the recent papers can be used to cycle back in time to the publication
dates of their citations, which again will bring the searcher back to the current literature. In this
way, a searcher can often use a single edition of a citation index to obtain a view of the historical
development of a subject that would require a methodical search of many editions of a subject
index (Garfield 1977).

Representation
Garfield (1979) emphasized on the factor that an author’s citation behavior might be influenced
to varying degrees by the visibility, prestige, and accessibility of the cited journal; Likewise,
Cronin (1984) suggested that social and psychological factors as well as other external factors,
such as the target audience or the character and status of a cited journal, affect the citing process.
ISI claims that the resultant citation counts are a measure of quality. However, not all disciplines
are equally represented, and the extent to which journals are selected for inclusion in the citation
indexes is dependent on a series of complex factors and policies (Testa, 1998). There is a
complexity that drives when the number of citation among gender is concerned, there are

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researchers that claims that the inclusion of women in a citation is minimal as compared to men,
where men are cited much more frequently than women
Ferber (1988) demonstrated that researchers tend to cite a larger proportion of authors of the
same gender. She stated that citation rates "should not be regarded as unbiased indicators of
merit. Factors relating to the usage of women’s surname has also sparked outrage in the past,
women were confined with certain regulation in using their name during the process of
publication. (Gorence, 1976). In some cases, employers refused to recognize any surname but
that of the husband, and litigation became common. Creamer also noted that women are less
likely to be listed as a senior author than are men, and cited figures from various disciplines.
Aver- aging Creamer's compilation of figures across all years and disciplines, only 22.74% of
senior authors were women (Creamer, 1998).

Conclusion
While referring to other papers an author automatically becomes a contributor not only to the
size of the system but also to its integration. ​Garfiend(1979)While referring to other papers an
author automatically becomes a contributor not only to the size of the system but also to its
integration. A citation count is based not only on the number of authors who cite another author's
work, but both the original work and the citer's work must be located in the body of literature
indexed by ISI, and to be included in the databases, both journals were subjected to peer review.
Garfield(1967) One of the most frequently expressed criticisms of the citation index is that it is
not a "subject" index. What is really meant, however, is that the citation index is not a "word"
index. Therefore, the question, "What is a subject?" is fundamental not only in evaluating
citation indexing but all types of systems for subject analysis. Garfield also indicates that
“scientific merit is not always the sole reason an author will cite a paper published in a particular
journal ”.
It can be a proof factor to note that Garfield's accomplishment in synthesizing the concept of
citation indexing lay forth in building up the utility and objectivity of a citation index and in
pulling up related papers in distributed writing that from the start probably won't have appeared
to be relevant to the specialist's request. Today, it is viewed as one of the most dependable assets

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in following the improvement of thought over the large number of controls that are a piece of our
group of scientific interpretation.

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