This is a complex, labor-intensive process so allow plenty of time. This guide provides best practices and techniques to maximize search results and efficiency but a Research Consultation with a librarian can provide additional guidance. Some things to keep in mind:
- It is impossible to get a complete, accurate count of citing references.
- Errors in citations are common, therefore many ‘variant’ references occur. It is difficult to track them all down.
- Citation styles vary by publisher, search for different forms of author name and journal title.
- You'll reach a point of diminishing returns for your efforts.
Committees
- Ask about your unit's P&T committee's--as well as the University committee's--stance on counting self-citations.
- Be aware of what resources your department and Marquette are willing to consider, e.g., does SCImago have credibility? SCImago covers more journals, e.g. ~2x in dentistry, they can be useful for journal ranking info with their SJR. They use a different formula than Journal Citation Reports so the two used in combination may give a better overall sense of a journal's influence.
Resource limitations
- No resource covers all citing sources; they only track what they track.
- Many subject databases have only recently begun to include/track reference lists thus may only include more recent citations to older publications.
- Some types of publications are not well covered: books, conference proceedings, and dissertations. This refers to both the original and citing documents.
- CAUTION: Be careful not to count the same citing publication more than once; the same citing publications will likely be found in more than one source. Creating a bibliography of all citing documents in RefWorks, EndNote or similar software is useful for removing duplicates. It is certainly possible that a publication cites two of your publications so proceed with caution.
- Different strategies must be used for different resources. We provide step-by-step instructions in this guide.
