Web of Science [v3.0] 2007: Citation count search

Three steps are necessary to capture the number of times an author's works have been cited.

1 Cited Author Search: to find the citations to a person's work by entering the person's name

2 Cited Reference Index review: to identify the works of the target author, and to eliminate publications by other same-named authors and items not wanted in the final set, eg IAU Circulars

3 Search Results –Summary: to retrieve and count the citing articles. Each of the citing articles you retrieve will contain at least one of the references you selected from the "Cited Reference Index" list.

Note: The committee should formalize a list of items to be excluded from the counts. Among items often excluded are articles with another as first author, IAU Circulars/Telegrams, IBVS items, BAAS abstract notices. Preprint and 'in press' items are usually included. All committee members should consistently exclude the same categories of items to elicit comparable results.

Shortcut to the UH Libraries "Web of Science" license page

http://micro189.lib3.hawaii.edu/ezproxy/details.php?dbId=2540

[This Web of Science Tutorial is in the Web of Science entry in the Best 20+ eResearch Indexes section of the

IfA Library web site]

click "Web of Science" on the UH Libraries page

login with your UH id barcode or UH Number and last name

1 CITED AUTHOR SEARCH

on the Web of Science site,

deselect the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)

and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI),

selecting only the Science Citation Index Expanded

click on the CITED REF SEARCH button

CITED REFERENCE SEARCH

finds articles that have cited the target author in the list of references and can limit the search by year or range of years.

How WoS handles names: In WoS, names are entered as last name followed by one or two initials, as they appear on the journal page. If some publications have listed the author with a single initial and others with two, the author's name will appear in two different forms. No effort is made by WoS to standardize authors' names by the number of initials shown.

There are frequently several people with exactly the same names and initials. Astronomers are sorted from other same-named researchers by journal title, conference abbreviation, etc.

To make accurate sets of comparison citations counts, the author's name variations must be identified. There are two options to retrieve variants of the author's name:

using the 'cited author index' or

name searching using the wildcard (*).

'Cited author index'
On the CITED REFERENCE SEARCH screen (shown above), click on 'cited author index' (blue lettering above CITED AUTHOR search box).
On the next screen, the 'Cited Author Index' screen (shown below), enter last name in the search box. From the displayed names, check all forms of the author's name, with one initial and with two or more. WoS will paste the selections in the lower search box, combining the selections with OR. Click OK when all the forms of the author's name have been identified.

Name searching using the wildcard (*)
In the CITED AUTHOR box, enter the target name, last name first, followed by first initial, using the wildcard (*) after the first initial: TOKUNAGA A*. Note there is no punctuation between last name and initial. This search will include authors with various middle initials. Scan the results list & check all occurrences of the target author's name, with a single initial & with two or more initials, using publications titles to identify astronomy works.

2 CITED REFERENCE INDEX REVIEW This is the list of articles by the author targeted in the search.

Click SHOW EXPANDED TITLES (blue lettering atop 'Cited Work' column) to see fuller publication information.

Using the fuller title display (shown below), identify the works of the targeted astronomer from same-named authors in other fields. WoS does not update citations after publication, so 'in press' articles should be included. WoS does not correct errors in an article's reference list, so an item may be listed with variations; all should be selected.

The author's name in block capitals means the person is first author.

The ellipses ( ... ) before an author's name signify that the author is a secondary author, not the first author of a cited article.

Select/deselect entries for the target author by toggling a check in box at left. All on the page can be selected by SELECT PAGE button; then unwanted entries can be deselected.

When all matching entries from all pages have been selected, click

FINISH SEARCH button (upper left) to retrieve citing articles. Each of the citing articles you retrieve will contain at least one of the references you selected.

3 SEARCH RESULTS – SUMMARY

The resulting SUMMARY lists the articles that have cited the target author. These are the bibliographic entries that are to be counted for the years to be compared. The most recent items are displayed first.

In the "Refine your results" section, click on "Publication Years" and the citation count by year will be displayed in citation totals order (shown below).