Guides @ UF: Research Metrics: Measuring the Influence and Impact of Research: Article Influence & Impact

Tracking an Article's Impact

When completing a citation analysis for a single article, it is important to use multiple tools because there is no single database that indexes all journal or all issues of a single journal title. As a result, different resources for citation counts have coverage gaps -- not all resources cover all subject matters thoroughly. In addition to coverage gaps, every database also differs in terms of format inclusion. Some include conference papers, books, dissertations and other works, while others do not.

Another consideration to bear in mind is there may be differences between resources as to author identity. Some databases or resources do not uniformly distinguish between authors with the same or similar names or pull together all publications by an authors who has published with name variations. If an author has not consistently published with the same name or exact spelling or format for his name, all of his work may not appear in a single search in Web of Science, for example, and his name may be listed differently in Google Scholar. This issue is known as "author disambiguation" and it it is a problem that tools like ORCID are targeted toward addressing. For more on this issue, see the Author Influence & Impact tab above.

Using Google Scholar to Track Citations

Google Scholar includes multi-disciplinary journal articles, conference proceedings and books. Users can search for a particular work and then click on the Cited By (number) to see citation counts. Authors can also create a profile to track citations to their own articles and compute several citation metrics.

Google Scholar Help

Word of caution - it is difficult to know which publications and dates are included in Google Scholar. Further, because of reported errors in its counts as a result of Google, inter alia, incorrectly identifying reviewers as authors and journal titles as article titles, results in Google Scholar should be carefully examined and should only be used as a supplement to other tools.

Tracking an Article's Citation Count - Web of Science

Web of Science is a subscription resource that includes journal articles (in Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Index databases), conference proceedings (in Conference Proceedings Citation Index), and books (in Book Citation Index database)

Use Cited Reference Search to see how many times a particular work or author has been cited.
Or, search for a particular work, then click on the number that follows Times Cited.
Create a Citation Alert to be notified of when a particular work is cited.

Additional Resources for Tracking an Article's Citation Count

BIOSYS Citation Index (UF Only)
This resource combines critical BIOSIS® content with powerful citation indexing and Web of Science search and discovery capabilities. BIOSIS Citation Index provides seamless searching of nearly 5,000 journal titles and 20 million records in the life sciences field, as well as 165,000 documents from more than 1,500 meetings, with coverage dating back to 1926.
Cite SeerX (free)
Includes journal articles in computer and information science. Search for a particular work or author. Select the desired work, then click on the number following Citations. Also see Years of Citing Articles at the right-hand side of the page to see citations across time
EBSCOHost Databases (UF Only)
Several EBSCO databases, including Academic Search Premiere, America: History and Life, Business Source Premier, CINAHL, Library Information Science and Technology Abstracts and PsycINFO, include citation counts for most, but not all, of the records.

Click on the Cited References at top of page (sometimes found under the More tab), search for a particular author or work, select woks and then click on Find Citing Articles.

Essential Science Indicators (ESI) This link opens in a new window
Essential Science Indicators (ESI) is an analytical tool that helps identify top-performing research using journals from the Web of Science Core Collection to rank authors, institutions, countries, and journals in 22 broad fields based on publication and citation performance.
F1000 Research This link opens in a new window
F1000Research is an Open Research publishing platform. All articles go through a transparent peer review process. Articles that pass peer review are indexed in other databases.

IEEE Xplore (UF Only)
Includes journal articles and conference proceedings in electrical engineering and computer science. Search for a particular author or work, then click on Cited by (number).
JSTOR (UF Only)
Includes journal articles in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Search for a particular author or work. Click (number) Items Citing This Item to see citing works within the JSTOR database, or click Items Citing This Item to see citing works in Google Scholar.
SciFinder (UF Only - requires registration by first-time users)
Includes journal articles, conference proceedings, and books in chemistry and related sciences. Search for a particular topic or author. Select the desired topic/author, then click Get References. Select a particular title, then click Get Citing.