UC Library Guides: Research Impact Factors: Citation tools

Databases

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Indexes over 12,000 of the highest impact journals, includes conference proceedings, but no books.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Indexes over 20,000 titles, conference papers, but no books. Citation data primarily from 1996 onwards.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Searches articles, theses, books from academic publishers, professiofnal societies, online repositories and other web sites. All data from Google Scholoar needs to be verified for accuracy as the citation figures are usually artificially inflated.
Publish or Perish This link opens in a new window
Free software which tracks your research impact using Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search.

Though limited in their scope, other databases also show citations of articles which may supplement your Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus searches.

Considerations

The results of citation analyses in various databases will vary depending on the tool(s) you use and the thoroughness of the search.

Why do different databases retrieve different results?

The citation data will relate only to articles indexed within the database. Variation may occur because the databases:

Index different publications.
Cover different date ranges.
Include poor-quality data (duplicate records, misspelt citations etc).

Can citation data be used to compare or benchmark articles?

It is important to ensure citation data is being used to compare like with like.

Different disciplines have markedly different citing behaviour and patterns.
Document age influences the number of citations it has, or is likely to receive.
When making comparisons, ensure the data has been normalised or adjusted to take into account differences between the disciplines.