Citation indexes
A citation index is a record of cited references, usually in the form of a published
list or an electronic database. For example, the Current Law Case Citator lists
all English court cases that have been reported since 1947 as well as subsequent
cases which have made reference to the case in question. For those working in
other fields, the ISI Web of Knowledge (WoK) databases provides three indexes:
• Arts and humanities citation index
• Science citation index
• Social science citation index
The Elsevier databases, Scopus and Science Direct also have sophisticated cita-
tion searching functions and other sources such as OUP's Oxford Journals
include some aspects of citation searching. Citation searching features can
include:
• Lists of references cited within the work with links when available
• The number of times the work has been cited on the database itself (with
links) but also sometimes in other sources such as the WWW or in patents
• Citations alert service
• The ability to search using the references field
• Detailed metrics showing the breakdown of citation figures
In order to proceed with a citation search, one (or more) work should be selected to act as the starting point. It is
preferable that this work is highly relevant to the subject matter so that any other works retrieved by the search are also
likely to be relevant.
The nature of citation searching means that among the items of interest retrieved, there will inevitably be works that are
not relevant or are of peripheral interest. It is therefore important that the information need is clearly defined together
with the limits of the investigations (see Chapter 4) so that it can easily be decided whether or not an item is relevant.
Comprehensive citation searching including working forwards in time is difficult without a citation index.
No comments :
Post a Comment