Research Article Review

Literature Review

Elisha Chand
Research Scholar of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Christ University, Bangalore, India

The following is a review of paper, "Citation indexing: uses and limitations", published in The Indexer in October, 1991.

 

Title of the Paper	Citation indexing: uses and limitations
Author(s)	Helen E. Chandler, Vincent de P. Roper
Journal	The Indexer, Vol. 17 No. 4
Year of Publication	October 1991

 

Introduction	·        Invented by Eugene Garfield ·        Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Sciences Citation Index (SCI) are all multidisciplinary and hence, appeals to a wider range of audience internationally. ·        Usually indexing is done using keywords from title. However, in humanities title and subject content of each chapter is analyzed.
Fundamental Principles	Three fundamental principles: ·        All new knowledge depends on pre-existing facts and knowledge. ·        Only a few journals contain discipline related core information. It is important to identify subject journals need to be identified. ·        Knowledge is the outcome of research. All knowledge needs to be recorded and its significance needs to be measured.
Components	The citation indexes published by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) is made of four constituents: ·        Source Index o   Author index for articles in a journal in a year. o   Format: First author, cooperating authors, language of article (if non-english), title of the article, name of the periodical, volume of the periodical, issue of the periodical, first and last pages, year of publication, no. of times referred. o   Impact can be easily traced. o   Focuses on reader’s subject of core interest ·        Citation Index o   Focusses on the core subject o   Newer citations of earlier work, type of publication is mentioned. o   Focuses on reader’s subject of core interest ·        Permuterm Index o   All possible permutations of keywords from the title and subtitle are used to categorize an article. o   Useful when the subject of interest is well defined ·        Corporate Index o   Institution and Geographical locations are used as identifiers. Readers can use geographical location or name of the institution to narrow their search. o   An alphabetical list of organizations and the related authors is generated. o   There can be errors if the author’s original designation and current affiliation is different. o   Author’s with same research area are categorized geographically and hence are difficult to trace.
Remote online access	·        Citing and cited authors o   While searching using author names, SSCI server specifies the research area and publication type to avoid any ambiguity for two authors with same names. ·        The subject approach o   Relies totally on title. o   Permuterm approach makes the search easier, allowing the search to show all possible combinations of keywords. o   Any error in input can alter the search results and might not show all relevant articles. Ex: ‘International Baccalaureate’ and ‘baccalaureate – international’ will produce different results. ·        Institutional approach o   There can be errors if the author’s original designation and current affiliation is different. o   Can be errors if records are not updated
Citation indexes on CD-ROM	Compact disk copies of SCI and SSCI named as SCI-CDE and SSCI-CDE respectively were also generated. Search can be performed digitally.
Limitations	·        Self-citation: Authors might unethically enhance the impact of an article. ·        Important articles might be missed out from the core journals. ·        Cooperating authors might not get credit. ·        Complicated process for researchers.
Summary	·        All the cited material needs to be acknowledged. Implicit and explicit both references must be indexed. ·        At the time of publication of this article, citation practice needed encouragement ·        At the time of publication of this article, information sources could not be utilized maximally because of the complexities of technology ·        Citation should not be the sole qualitative measure, author’s credentials, frequency and impact of the journal, and the nature of core subject should be equally important.

 

Reference

[1] H. E. Chandler, and V. Roper. "Citation indexing: Uses and limitations." Indexer 17, no. 4 (1991): 243-249.