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Bibliometrics and Citation Tracking: Book Measures and Tools

Google Tools

Google Scholar gives citation counts of book titles and book chapters with link to citing works.  Google Scholar is particulary a helpful tool to book-based disciplines ( social sciences, arts and humanities) for tracking citations not available through major online databases.

Use the advanced search and languages limit in Settings for reducing the amount of unwanted results.

Google Books provides book reviews with a breakdown by user rating, star review ranking, and site review name.

Suggested Reading

Book Citation Index within Web of Science

Web of Science is adding books to its data set.  The Book Citation index comprises scholarly books from series and non-series format including textbooks, published dissertations, translations of non-English titles, and book chapters. The coverage is divided into 2 book indexes - Book Citation Index- Science and
Book Citation Index- Social Sciences & Humanities starting with copyright from 2005 up to current year.  Sometimes you may come across earlier citations.  The Book Citation Index gives number of citation counts when a book or book chapter has been cited in other works.

Currently there are 40,000 books indexed, and 15.5 million cited references.  For a content coverage by broad subject click here.

What is included?  Click here to view the complete list of publishers and books included in these indexes.

Searching Book Citation Index within Web of Science

Selecting Book Citation Index within Web of Science

Both indexes can be searched simultaneously or separately by clearing the check boxes from Web of Science homepage (see below).

Has my book been indexed ?
Select the Cited References Search tab. Enter the first word(s) of a book title followed by an asterisk (*) in the Cited Work field and the author in the Cited author fields using the drop down menu. 

Has my book been cited?
Select the Cited References Search tab. Enter details  in the same way as above. Select citations from the list of results, and click Finish Search to view full details of citing articles.

Has chapters of my book been cited?
Select Cited Reference Search tab enter a title chapter in the Cited Title field from the drop down menu. Add author in the Cited Author field.

Image showing how to check boxes for the book citation index in a Web of Science search.

Other databases with book indexing

PsycINFO, the major citation database for behavioral sciences and mental health indexes a small percentage of books and book chapters.  Book chapters and book series can be searched through the Search Fields or Multi-field Search tabs on the Ovid platform.

Scopus, one of the major multi-disciplinary citation database also contains monographs and edited volumes from 370 book series, reference works and graduate level textbooks.  Book series titles can be searched through the Sources tab, cited book chapters or titles through the default Document Search in Scopus homepage. For individual book titles in the disciplines  of social sciences and humanities try Google Scholar and Google books.

Using author's search for author's impact:If you want to find out how the work of an author is being used by other authors you can use Scopus author search tab, Web of Science author search and also Google tools.  Scopus and Web of Science provide the h index metric (measurement based on the number of papers and number of citations per paper).
 

Subject Guide

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Rachel Scanlon
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Contact:
Radcliffe Science Library
01865 272824
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Librarian for Non Clinical Medicine and Life Sciences

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Karine Barker
Contact:
Radcliffe Science Library
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01865272802
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