Citation Searching & TrackingTo be cited means that your scholarly publication has been cited by another author who refers to your publication within their publication and includes the bibliographic citation in the list of works cited.
A citation search retrieves information about the publications that have cited a specific publication or an author.
Image source: Iconathon (Noun Project)
When you're performing a citation search, it's best to use several databases to try to ensure you're capturing as much information as possible. Don't settle for the results in just one database. Citation indexes will collect citation data for publications indexed in the database. You can get a total citation count as well as author metrics.
Google Scholar can also provide some useful information. However, as Google Scholar citations are based on the search engine's spiders and not human input, they are subject to errors such as counting duplicate entries and other problems that skew the results.
Students wishing to perform citation searches for a particular author are encouraged to use Scopus and Web of Science rather than Google Scholar.
Don't forget to remove self-citations from the total citations for greater accuracy, which Scopus and Web of Science can do but Google Scholar can't. Find the means to remove self-citations in each database's citation report or overview tool.
Scopus automatically assigns Scopus Author Profiles to the authors of publications indexed in the database. Authors must claim their algorithmically-created profiles in order to eliminate duplicate records and inaccurate information.
The Author Profile assigns you a Scopus Author ID and also allows you to link your ORCID, if you have one, for wider citation use. However, Scopus links articles to authors through use of an algorithm, and it is up to the individual authors to check the accuracy of these links and ensure that the citations associated with their Scopus Author ID are correct.
FIND AN AUTHOR
Use the Authors tab to search directly for a person (click image to enlarge).
In the list of articles associated with the author, select all and click "View citation overview" to analyze citations and eliminate self-citations.
Web of Science automatically assigns author records and Web of Science ResearcherID numbers to authors of publications indexed in the database. Authors must claim their algorithmically-created profiles in order to eliminate duplicate records and inaccurate information.
Web of Science's author profiles are linked through Publons, the peer review platform. You must create a Publons account to claim your publications and ResearcherID, and from there correct any errors.
You can also link your ORCID profile.
FIND AN AUTHOR
Use the search type pulldown menu to choose Author and then find the author's name in the dropdown list that will appear when you start entering the name (click image to enlarge).
When you've reached the list of citations, click to view the Citation Report to analyze the data and eliminate self-citations.
Every academic author should set up their "My Citations" account in Google Scholar, found in the menu bar in Google Scholar when the user is signed into Google, to create a definitive collection of documents found within Scholar when the author's name or article keywords appear in a results list. Authors can manually enter bibliographic information for documents or find them within Scholar and link them back to the My Citations account.
However, please note that the citation counts found within Google Scholar can't eliminate self-citations, may contain duplicates, and can't be refined to limit just to scholarly articles. Therefore, consider Google Scholar to serve in a supporting role when collecting citations, rather than fully relying on the data it provides.
Also in Google Scholar, you can set your Scholar Preferences (click on the "Options" gear icon in the upper-right corner) to specify that you're a member of the Stevens community. This will allow you to search for articles in Google Scholar and link to the Library's subscription databases to obtain the full text of documents.
The Google Scholar @ Stevens guide provides more information on linking to Library resources as well as a search box for Google Scholar with those settings already in place:
