Citation Analysis: 3. Alternative Methods

Certain disciplines, journals, and document types may not be well represented in the more traditional sources for citation analysis. In this situation, it becomes necessary to find alternative sources for locating citations to an author or published work.  This page identifies potential alternative sources grouped by their database search interface since each of the sources within a group would have a common search strategy for extracting citation information.

Database Description:

• ACM Digital Library - covers computing literature from the Association of Computing Machinery and many other publishers.  Includes books, journal articles, conference proceedings, doctoral dissertations, master's theses, and technical reports.

Directions:

1. Search for an author or title to be cited.
2. Be sure "expanded form" has been selected for the "Display results" option.
3. The Citation Count will be listed in the Bibliometrics section of each search result entry.

The LIU Brooklyn Library subscribes to the following EBSCOhost databases:

• Academic Search Premier
• Business Source Premier
• CINAHL Plus with Full Text
• Communication & Mass Media Complete
• Communication Abstracts
• Education Research Complete
• Environment Complete
• Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text
• GreenFILE
• Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA)
• MLA International Bibliography
• PsycARTICLES
• PsycINFO
• SocINDEX with Full Text

Directions:

1. Click on "Cited References" in the navigation bar across the top.
2. Search for the author or article title to be cited.
3. Check the box next to each relevant item in the results that has a "Times Cited in this Database" link.
4. Click the "Find Citing Articles" button at the top of the results to see the articles that are citing the original source.

• MathSciNet indexes the mathematical literature and has a special search features called "Author Citations". "The Citation Database is based on the information contained in reference lists drawn from certain journals covered by MathSciNet. Reference lists in all of the journals covered in the Citation Database go back to a publication year of 2000. A smaller number of journals have reference lists in MathSciNet back to 1997."  

Directions:

• Click on the "Citations" tab at the top of the search box
• Enter either the author's "lastname" or "lastname, firstinitial" in the search box
• If more than one author matches the search, click on the scroll arrow in the box and select the appropriate author (you will only be able to select one author at a time from the list)
• A list of the author's publications that have been cited will be displayed.
• In the left column labeled "Citations", next to each publication, is the number of times the publication has been cited by other publications in the MathSciNet database.
• To see what the citing publications are:
  • Click on the cited publication's title in the "Publications" column
  • On the record for the publication, near the upper right corner, will be a gray box with "From References" and "From Reviews" links
  • Click on these links to see the citing publications

The LIU Brooklyn Library subscribes to the following ProQuest databases:

• ProQuest Databases
• ProQuest Health Management
• ProQuest Research Library
• ProQuest Psychology Journals

Directions:

1. Search for the author or article title to be cited.
2. Look for items in the search results that have "Cited by [number]" at the bottom of the entry, after the "View Record" and "References" links, indicating they have been cited by other articles in the ProQuest databases.
3. Click on the "Cited by" link to see the articles from the ProQuest databases within the same disciplinary group (Social Sciences, Engineering and Materials, Natural Sciences, or APA Psyc... databases) that are citing the original source.

Database Description:

• PubMed - covers bio-medical and life sciences journal articles. Links to citing articles found in the PubMed Central collection of full text journals.

Directions:

1. In PubMed, use the dropdown menu (set by default to All Databases) and select PMC.
2. Click on Search, without entering any term.
3. Go to Advanced.
4. In the pulldown menu under "Builder" select Reference Author. You may also add other terms in different fields in a second box. You may also show index list when you have chosen a name in Reference Author and you will see a list of authors with the name you are searching. Select one or more and the search engine will place the names in the search box and search those names.
5. Click on Search.
6. The results showing are those articles in the PubMed Central Collection in which the "Reference Author" was cited.

Sage Journals Online - full text journals published by Sage, most going back to volume 1 issue 1 for the title. Covers communication studies, criminology, education, health sciences, management & organization studies, materials science, political science, psychology, sociology and urban studies & planning. Use the dropdown menu to change the search field to References.

The content on this page is borrowed with permission from the University of Michigan Library and the Arizona State University Library. You may access Michigan's Citation Analysis guide here and ASU's guide here.