What is Citation Tracking all about?
Citation tracking in can be used to identify the most important articles, research papers, scientific journals, and influential researchers in any given discipline. Analyzed systematically, it can reveal who has cited a particular study, how often it has been cited, and what disciplines are represented by those subsequent citations.
A citation index is the standard tool used in citation tracking. In a citation index you can search backwards (with lists of cited articles) and forwards (with lists of articles citing a particular article) and determine the chronological position of a research contribution in the academic debate.
Citation tracking is also used to identify the reaction of the academic community to any given article, as it allow for the identification of research article that build on, or refute any particular contribution. Citation tracking also helps to identify and analyze research trends.
In addition, citation tracking allows scholars to see how often and by whom their research papers are cited. In the STEM sciences (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), scholars could consult the Web of Science of Clarivate Analytics for this type of information. Since 2004, two competitors emerged: Scopus of Elsevier and Google Scholar Metrics of Google, both of which are also of interest to researchers in social sciences and humanities.
However please note that which database provides the most complete set of citing literature may depend on the subject and publication year of a given article.
Relevant links
- Section of Google Scholar Metrics for the African Studies
- List of publications on the social sciences of Web of Science (PDF)
- Author Search at Scopus
