Scholarly Credentials Toolkit for TCNJ Faculty: Article Impact

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Cited reference searches and reports generated by the tools listed in the Article Impact section of this guide invariably produce duplicate references or cites. Easily de-duplicate your results lists by importing them into RefWorks, an online bibliographic management tool licensed by Gitenstein Library. Most of the library's databases allow direct importing of citations into RefWorks.

Challenges and limitations of traditional citation counts/analyses, particularly when used outside the sciences:

• Citation counts gauge impact. Rely on peer review to assess quality.
• Disciplinary context is key. Do not compare scholars across fields.
• All cites to a work are not created equal. Anyone who has ever read a literature review in the social sciences knows that one or two works often stand out. In other words, from which of the many cited works did the citing author draw the most inspiration?
• Citation counts can be manipulated. Authors who extensively cite themselves might inflate their own impact. Editors and peer reviewers too can sometimes inflate the impact factors of the journals for which they volunteer or work. Indeed, two researchers recently uncovered disturbing patterns related to "coercive citation" practices among journal editors and even the presence in academia of "citation cartels".
• Works with low citation counts are not necessarily low impact. Infrequently cited works sometimes spur reflection among peers even if they do not cite them. In the absence of citation counts, consider Altmetrics that measure attention or usage (e.g., full-text views in a database or download counts).
• High citation counts might indicate merely that an author is trendy. Scholars who gravitate toward less pressing topics could receive fewer citation counts and yet still have had an impact on their disciplines. Perhaps in a future turn an article with a low citation count will nevertheless have presaged an academic trend.
• Citation analyses looks backwards and therefore cannot address the future impact of a budding scholar.