LibGuides: Citation Searching: What is Citation Searching?

Background

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 provides data on the relative "impact" of journals, authors, and institutions, as well as assessing particular areas of research activity and publication. This field is called bibliometrics.

While a number of databases allow citation searching today, Web of Science (now a product of Clarivate Analytics, formerly part of Thomson Reuters) was the original citation index tool. It covers all disciplines, but is strongest in STEM subjects where journals are the predominant form of cited literature.

UT-Austin users can access the Web of Science citation indexes back to 1900.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window 1900 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. The Web of Science Core Collection is a group of databases (Science Citation Index Expanded, 1900-present; Social Sciences Citation Index, 1900-present; Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 1975-present) that together cover more than 21,000 journals across all disciplines. The Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005-present) tracks thousands of additional journals that are being considered for inclusion in the main citation indexes. Other files track references from conference proceedings (1990-present) and citations to books (2005-present).
The Web of Science platform currently also provides temporary access to several databases that are not part of the Core Collection, including Biosis Citation Index, Data Citation Index, and Zoological Record.

What Can I Do with Citation Indexes?

Find papers that cite earlier papers

Citation searching allows you to look forward in the literature from the starting point of a particular paper or group of papers. This approach complements the more familiar word-based literature searching, which looks backward in time. It allows you to find more documents on the same or similar topic without using any keywords or subject terms. [See Find Citing Papers tab.]

Find out how many times my publications have been cited. Determine my h-index.

Counting one's citations is an important part of knowing your own scholarly impact. [See Author Impact tab.]

Determine the "best journals" in my field.

Citation data is the raw material behind the Journal Impact Factor, a relative score of a journal's aggregate citation rate in recent years. [See Journal Impact Factors tab.]

Verify old and obscure references.

Sometimes you'll run across a mysterious reference, and you won't be able to determine what it's referring to. By searching that reference as a "cited reference" in Web of Science, you may find other, more complete citations that might solve the mystery. It doesn't matter how old the mystery item is, or what kind of publication it was -- if someone has cited it since 1900 it will show up in the Citation Index.

Credits

This guide is authored by David Flaxbart, Liaison Librarian for Chemistry and STEM Resources Coordinator.