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University of Denver

University Libraries

Research Guides

Citation Analysis & Bibliometrics: Home

This guide is designed to help you explore and understand the world of bibliometrics, altmetrics, journal impact factors, the h-index, and other citation analysis tools.

Getting Started with Bibliometrics

Journal articles, journals, researchers, and institutions can all be evaluated based on the number of published works, both in sheer numbers as well as quality of the published work. Naturally these all interconnect and have an impact upon one another.

  • The value of journal articles, books and other similar works can be measured by the number of times there are cited within other published works. In addition to the traditional bibliographic measurements (bibliometrics) works can also be measured by alternative metrics (altmetrics) such as: number of shares, tweets, likes, blogged about, etc.
  • Academic journal significance is often measured by the number of times the articles published within the journal are cited as well as where those articles are published.
  • Of course researchers also have an impact upon bibliometric information that is based on their successes. The more works a researcher publishes as well as how many times their works are cited indicates a higher ranking. Institutions have reputations to maintain including the quality of the research coming from their institutions, which is measured by the collective impact of the researchers in comparison to other institutions.

Citation Tracking & Maps

It can take years for articles, books, etc. to get published, keep that in mind when tracking citations. Unfortunately, it doesn't all happen at once. As you can see with the visualization below, you can create maps of citations going forward and back in time: citation maps. This is just a small start to what could become large citation map.

Understanding Bibliometrics

But Why Bibliometrics?

Bibliometrics effects a consider amount of people and processes. Bibliometrics affects people and researchers because the number of times individuals are cited can determine tenure and research funding. Furthermore, those journals that have a high impact factor are more popular and will definitely be found in journal collections over other journals that do not have as high of an impact factor. These journals are more popular and tend to have more status within their fields, justified or no.

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