Finding Citation Counts for Books and Book Chapters
A number of disciplines, especially in the Social Sciences and the Arts & Humanities publish their research in books and other types of publications. These disciplines are not that well served by traditional tools of citation analysis such as Web of Science and Scopus that primarily focus on journal literature. So how do you gauge the scholarly impact of your books and chapters in books? Listed below are a few strategies, while they are not perfect or comprehensive, they can help you collect some relevant data:
-
ScopusAlong with citation and abstract, Scopus includes references (bibliography) for articles indexed within the database. In the Basic Search tab, enter your book or book chapter title and limit your search to References from the drop-down box. This will find all items where your book or book chapter appears in the List of References.
-
WorldCat DiscoveryWorldCat is a catalog that reflects the holdings of libraries around the world. It contains records for the following types of materials: books, journals, musical scores, computer data files, magazines, newspapers, computer programs, manuscripts, sound recordings, films and slides, maps, and videotapes. To assess the scholarly impact of your books, search each title in WorldCat and in each relevant record, check the “Libraries Worldwide” field. It will tell you how many Libraries own that item and also provide the names of the Libraries.
-
Google ScholarGoogle Scholar’s strength lies in the fact that it not only indexes journal articles but also books, book chapters and other non-traditional sources such as promotional pages, table of contents pages, course reading lists etc. Caveats: Google Scholar is not as accurate as Scopus since it cannot remove self-citations and may include multiple entries for one work which can inflate results.
Some subscription-based databases such as PsycINFO and Sociological Abstracts also index books and book chapters and will provide “times cited” information. Additional information is noted in Alternate Sources of Searching within the Guide.
-
PsycINFOScholarly articles in psychology, plus medicine, psychiatry, education, social work, criminology, social science, business, & organizational behavior. 1872-present.
-
SocIndex with Full TextScholarly journal articles about sociology and other social and behavioral sciences. Includes culture & social structure; economic development; evaluation research; family & social welfare; management and complex organizations; policy planning. 1963-present.
