Citation Analysis: Some Caveats

The citation indexes created by the Institute for Scientific Information provide access to journal articles, review articles, reviews, meeting abstracts, etc. found in several thousand journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. They also provide unique access to the cited reference lists of these source documents, allowing one to perform cited reference searches.

Citation databases provide information that can be used to evaluate a person or a department. While citation analysis provides an different view of research, some guidelines should be observed:

Not all journals are covered in the creation of the source records. Consult the journal lists for the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Science Citation Index (expanded), or the Social Sciences Citation Index at http://www.isinet.com/listlinx.html.
A list of publications, with full authorship, should be used in searching for cited references. First authors (last name plus initials) should be used for maximum retrieval of cited references. Secondary authors are indexed only if the cited reference has been used as a source document in the citation database.
Consider the following when searching for an author:
- Names can be misspelled.
- Names with hypens and apostrophes may not be handled consistently.
- Inconsistent use of initials.
- Common names and initials may retrieve papers written by someone with the same name but in a different field.
- If a person is not the first author on a paper that is not covered by the citation index, then one must search for that paper by the first author.
Self -citation may account for some of the cited references.
Not all cited references are positive.
Book reviews, letters, meeting abstracts, etc. are also source records.
Review articles may be cited more than those that offer new concepts or ideas.

. For more information, consult:

Courtois, Martin. “Tips for searching the ISI citation indexes for personnel decisions.” Database, 16(3): 60-. 1993. Source: Lexis-Nexis. Online. November 1998.
Garfield, Eugene. “How to use citation analysis for faculty evaluations, and when is it relevant? Part 1.” Essays of an Information Scientist. http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/eugene_garfield/essays/v6p354y1983.pdf
Garfield, Eugene. “How to use citation analysis for faculty evaluations, and when is it relevant? Part 2.” Essays of an Information Scientist. http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/eugene_garfield/essays/v6p363y1983.pdf

Gayle Baker
University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries
July 22, 1999.