Citation Analysis

This guide is designed to bring together library resources and services that would be useful to anyone doing citation analysis.

The field of bibliometrics is increasingly being used to evaluate the impact of a scholar's work or the importance of a journal in a particular field. Though citation counts and journal impact factors are only one way to evaluate research impact, the guidance provided here will steer you through the process of gathering this information.

It is important to remember that judging the quality of a publication, whether it is an entire journal or a particular journal article, is ultimately a fairly subjective process. Results can vary depending on which criteria are used, how measurements are made, how much information is available and so on. Some disciplines have more established rankings than others. Also the situation changes regularly as new resources are developed that try to provide this information. If you have questions about this process for your specific situation, please contact your subject specialist.

This guide was inspired by a guide created at Arizona State University's Library and further developed by a team of librarians at the University of Michigan. Thank you both teams for allowing us to make use of the content for our own guide.