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Research Metrics Toolkit

Author Citation Count

What

A count of the citations received by a researcher's publications.

Why

  • To quantify the engagement with your research by other researchers

Applications

  • Funding applications, Academic promotion, Job applications

Considerations

  • Favours longer career/publishing history
  • Citing behaviour can vary significantly between disciplines

Common tools

  • Scopus/SciVal
  • Web of Science/InCites
  • Google Scholar

 

How to: Calculate your citation count

Scopus

  1. Access Scopus from the Library website
  2. Change the Search option to Authors, and type your last name, first initial, and affiliation in the correct search fields
  3. Select the correct author from the search results
  4. View the total citations and number of citing documents in the top section of the author profile page.

Please note: Citation Count from Scopus only takes into consideration documents that are indexed in the Scopus database.

Web of Science

For the most accurate citation count from Web of Science, create a Web of Science profile and add your publications.

From within Web of Science:

  1. Access Web of Science from the Library website
  2. Change the search field next to the search box from Topic to Author Identifiers
  3. Enter author ResearcherID, then click Search
  4. From the top right of the search results page, select Create Citation Report to view Citation count for the documents included in the search.

Google Scholar

The easiest way to find your citation count according to Google Scholar is to create an author profile and include all of your publications.

  1. Go to Google Scholar 
  2. Click on 'My Citations'
  3. Login to your personal Google account. Your citation count will appear in the author details to the right of your profile.

Please note: Citations tracked by Google Scholar are not controlled for quality in the same way as Scopus or Web of Science. Metrics from Google Scholar may appear higher and may include errors. However, it can provide better indexing of journal articles and citations in disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences, than the traditional citation databases.