Scholarly Impact: Find Article Citations

Web of Science - Available only to Tech faculty, staff, and students. Web of Science displays citation counts and sorts search results by citation counts. 

Use Web of Science to find citation counts for the following:

• Peer-reviewed journal articles in the sciences
• Articles published after 2003
• Articles primarily in the sciences
• Articles primarily published in English

Web of Science citation counts generally include only academic journals, and users can generate citation reports for individual authors or collection of articles.  Citation counts will display to the right of the article title as "Times Cited".  

The ATU Library subscribes to the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) --2003-present.  This resource is best for articles in the sciences; it will offer very limited results in social sciences or arts & literature.  Even though our subscription only covers certain indexes, the Times Cited count includes all of Web of Science—you will only see, however, the citing articles available through the ATU subscription.

GoogleScholar - https://scholar.google.com/ - is likely the largest citation index.  While its true size is unknown, it is estimated that it contains over 160 million records.  Use GoogleScholar to find citation counts for:

• Articles in all disciplines
• Books
• Articles from non-English publications
• Theses and Dissertations

To find article citation counts, search for a specific title, author, or keyword.  Find the "Cited by" link below the article

This count of citing articles is based on the number of other articles and books indexed within GoogleScholar which cite this work.  The scholarly material may be peer-reviewed articles, but it may also be unpublished student works, books, duplicate entries, predatory journal articles, or errors.  

The list below includes other databases available at the Library or on the web will offer citation counts.  These counts are contextual to the source.  For example, the Times Cited counts in a database like PsycINFO will only include the number of times the article has been cited within PsycINFO.  

1. ​​CONTEXT IS KEY - Results will vary across citation indexes.  An article citation count in Google Scholar will not be the same as the count in Web of Science
2. There is no ONE true count.  Not all of scholarship is contained within one, online system.
3. It is more difficult to get proper citation counts for older research.  Much of it is not yet online nor adequately indexed online.
4. Newer research will not have high citation counts--publishing and impact takes time
5. Certain disciplines, like medical sciences, lend themselves to higher citation counts because their publishing frequency is heavier and more rapid.  Other disciplines do not use journal articles as the primary vehicle for scholarly activity. It is not accurate to compare research across disciplines.
6. Review articles are often more cited than original research articles because they summarize many papers.  Original research will garner more citations than replication studies.  

Scopus is a comparable product to Web of Science and is not available at the Ross Pendergraft Library.  While Web of Science is larger in size and there is some overlap, there may be content uniquely indexed by Scopus.  If you are having trouble finding resources in Web of Science, please contact one of the librarians who may be able to help.