THIS VERSION SUPERSEDED--TO BE REMOVED

This is a webpage about using Web of Science (hereafter, WOS) to do citation studies. A citation study involves counting how many times a single document (journal paper, conference paper, or whatever) was cited. It also provides bibliographic information about the citing articles.

Lehigh's version of WOS covers 1993 to present. The citing items in WOS are largely journal articles but occasionally are from book series. For earlier years, see the print and CD versions.

As an example, look for cites to

A.P. Gast, W. P. Russell, and C. K. Hall. An experimental and theoretical study of phase transitions in the polystyrene latex and hydroxyethylcellulose system. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 109(1): 161-171, 1986.

Optional: (1) choose which of the three subset citation databases are relevant to your author/topic.

(2) Restrict results to certain years (these are not the years the original document was published, but the years it may have been cited).

Enter the name of the author in the cited author search screen.

In this example, the author is given as A. P. Gast, but it could be cited as "A. Gast" or as "A. P. Gast"; using the * (asterisk) finds both variations.

From the resulting list, select those items that correspond to the cited article, keeping in mind that errors can be present in the way the data is rendered by the citing author. For example, several articles cite p. 160 instead of p. 161; others have volume/page variations; 2 cite "A. Gast." To throw a wide net, select all that fit the pattern.

Click on Finish Search.

CAVEAT #1.

To do a thorough search of WOS (1993 forward) to generate citation counts, read the following notes.

You may notice a discrepancy between the "times cited" in the cited reference list and the number of source records that you bring up after clicking the "Finish Search" button. This is because Lehigh's subscription only enables viewing of source records for 1993 forward. However, you can still see the "times cited" for the entire range of source record coverage, all the way back to 1900 if your item was cited that far back. You just won't be able to see the citing records previous to 1993.

For example, the item checked below is from 1892. Note that the "times cited" column has 10 records.

WOS only displays full citation counts for items cited within the time frame of our subscription (1993 to date). If a document was cited numerous times before 1993 but not cited correctly after 1992, then a citation search will produce zero results.

For example:

Smith E J Ext Anal 1972 14 122 was cited 122 times from 1973 to 1991.

It was cited incorrectly in 1994 as Smith F J Ext Anal 1972 14 122

The author is E. Smith but was cited as F. Smith. WOS does not recognize these as the same author/title combination. Therefore, a cited reference search for Smith E J Ext Anal 1972 14 122 in our WOS subscription would produce zero results and not show any of the earlier cites.

In doing cited reference searching, make liberal use of truncation and minimal information (e.g., leave out specific dates and page numbers if possible). That way you'll throw a net wide enough that you will catch variations (including errors) in the way the cited item might have been rendered by citing documents.

Sometimes it is desirable to remove "self-citations" (defined as at least one of the authors of the citing documents is also one of the authors of the document being cited). The document has to be 1993 or later to use our subscription of Web of Science to remove self-citations. Below is a summary of the steps and then an example. See also "Comprehensive Cited Author Searching" at ISI's tutorials webpage.

1.  Using the Cited Ref Search, enter the name of the FIRST author of the work (article, book, etc.) and click Search. This is the first author that appears on the actual item . 

2.  From the resulting list of possible matches, checkmark those that either match or are obvious typos, then click Finish Search. This creates SET 1. This is a set of citing items.  Some of the citing items may have at least one author that matches one of the original document's authors.

3.  To remove any self-citations, you can use one of two procedures.  You can scroll through SET 1 and remove any documents that list one of the authors that appears in the cited item. This works fine for short lists of citing documents.  See also the Note below.

OR

4.  Using the General Search, put in the names of authors in this format: Author 1 or Author 2 or Author 3 etc. Run the search. This creates SET 2.

5. Next go to the Advanced Search area and combine the Cited Ref Search (SET 1) with the Author name search (SET 2) using NOT logic:  SET 1 not SET 2.

6.  The result will be a set of citing articles that do not include any of the original authors of the cited document.  This method is especially useful for documents with numerous cites, but see following Note.

Note: there may be some cases where the citing author(s) have the same name as one of the authors of the cited item. For example, John A. Smith vs James A. Smith, Yunfei Zhou vs Yufeng Zhou. To eliminate these, look at the author institutional affiliations and/or email addresses within the WOS source records to see if this helps identify whether it is the same individual or someone different.

EXAMPLE

Let's say you want to determine the number of times that the following item has been cited in WOS (1993 - forward in our subscription), but excluding from the citation count those citing documents in which any of the authors (Ozdeger E, Sudol ED, ElAasser MS, Klein A) also appears as an author of the citing item:

Title: Role of the nonionic surfactant Triton X-405 in emulsion polymerization .1. Homopolymerization of styrene
Author(s): Ozdeger E, Sudol ED, ElAasser MS, Klein A
Source: JOURNAL OF POLYMER SCIENCE PART A-POLYMER CHEMISTRY 35 (17): 3813-3825 DEC 1997

Notice that the item that has been checked, with times cited 29, corresponds to the original document. Scan the other items in the list for possible mis-cites.

3. Click on Finish Search.  This becomes "Set  #1"

AT THIS POINT YOU CAN SCROLL THROUGH THE SOURCE RECORDS THAT COME UP AND REMOVE ANY THAT HAVE ONE OF THE ORIGINAL AUTHORS.

OR, you can use the following procedure.

4. Go to General Search and run a search on all the authors of the original document, putting this string into the author search area:

Ozdeger E* OR Sudol E* OR ElAasser M* OR El-Aasser M* OR Klein A*

NOTE: the Asterisk (*) includes all variants of the author's initials. El-Aasser M* includes El-Aasser M and El-Aasser MS. In screen shot above, all of these have been entered but you only see a portion of them:

This results in 1691 items.

5. Now go to the Advanced Search screen and put in "#1 NOT #2", as follows:

6. This results in 25 citing items that cite the original document but which exclude its authors. (See Note above concerning point that there may be some cases where the citing author(s) have the same name as one of the authors of the cited document.)

Webpage maintained by Sharon Siegler and Brian Simboli. Latest version 10/18/06.