Tips for improving citations
2nd Bibliometrics in Libraries Meeting
Clari Gosling, 12th Sept 2013
Questions to start with
• What is a citation?
• Why do authors cite?
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Why are things cited?
Justification of a statement/strengthen an argument
Avoid plagiarism
Show idea development/build on previous work
Provide further information
Provide counter argument – controversy
Provide historical overview of subject
Establish trust/credibility
Literature review is the accepted way of working
They’re what everyone else cites/key papers
Cite “out of area” to demonstrate inter-disciplinarity
To get into “citation ring”/encourage citations of you
The author cited you previously
Requested by reviewer/editor for publication
In Summary
• Authors cite a work because:
– It is relevant (in some way) to what they’re writing
– They know it exists
Information overload
• Updated daily, Scopus covers 50 million abstracts of
over 20,500 peer-reviewed titles from more than 5,000
publishers
• The average time a researcher spends browsing and
reading literature in 9.3 hours per week
Is this relevant?
Findability
• Your article needs to show up in search results
– Title
– Abstract
– Keywords
• Then it has to hook them in
– Introduction
– Conclusions
– Figures & graphs
Search Engine Optimisation
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Headings
Links
Image & table captions
Author information
Increasingly takes account of social media mentions too
Where to publish
• Think about journal rankings
• Inclusion in Scopus and Web of Science
• Terms and conditions of publishing - do you need to
publish Open Access as a requirement of your funder?
– Green and gold OA
– Author pays model
• Cost effectiveness of OA
http://www.eigenfactor.org/openaccess/
– Reputation – some OA journals are considered
predatory http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
Self-citations
• Often excluded from citation statistics
• But show how your work is developing
• Has been studies that show that the more you cite
yourself, the more others cite you
• “Controlling for numerous sources of variation in
cumulative citations from others, our models suggest
that each additional self-citation increases the number of
citations from others by about one after one year, and by
about three after five years. ”
• Fowler, J. & Aksnes, D. Does self-citation pay?
Scientometrics, September 2007, Volume 72, Issue 3,
pp 427-437
International collaborations
Author profiles
• Why?
– Claim your research
– Add extra information (website, photo, keywords)
– Allow readers to browse your work easily
• Where?
– ORCID
– Scopus
– ResearcherID
– Google Scholar
ORCID
• Registry of researchers
linking to their outputs
• Publisher Independent
• Embedding your ORCID
in published papers
allows readers to find you
even if you’ve moved
institution
• Links to Scopus &
ResearcherID so don’t
have to enter all your
details multiple times
http://orcid.org/
Academic social networking sites
• Allow you to network with your peers and share your
research
• Some have the ability to ask and answer research
related questions, create groups or share references
• Often rank highly in Google and other search engines
• Can make your publications available to download
(where allowed within t&c of publication)
• Talk to colleagues and find out what they’re using
• Examples:
– Academia.edu; ResearchGate; Mendeley
Social Media
• “If you tell people about your research, they look at it.
Your research will get looked at more than papers which
are not promoted via social media”
• Michelle Terras at UCL blogged and tweeted about
already published research and saw an increase in
downloads from their institutional repository
• http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19
/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/
Useful intro to using social media
in academia
• Bik HM, Goldstein MC (2013) An Introduction to Social
Media for Scientists. PLoS Biol 11(4): e1001535.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535
• http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.137
1%2Fjournal.pbio.1001535
Things to do
• Step 1 publish your
research & think about
people finding it
• Step 2 claim your
research & create a
profile
– ORCID
– ResearcherID
– Scopus Author Profile
– Google Scholar
• Step 2b
– Profile on an “academic
social networking site” eg
ResearchGate,
Academia.edu, Mendeley
• Step 3 engage & publicise
– Create your own website
– Blog
– Twitter
– Google+
– Facebook groups
– Wikipedia links
– Slideshare
– Youtube
– LinkedIn
– Publisher community sites
The Open University Library
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
www.open.ac.uk/library
clari.gosling@open.ac.uk