what does the number of citations in a research paper indicate

Ruminating…

Random thoughts about conducting scientific research, supervising students and «toys» that make creative activities even funnier….

How many citations are actually a lot of citations?

In a previous blog post , I suggested to my younger colleagues that while they should not care so much about the impact factor of the journals they published in (as long as these journals are well-read in their respective fields of research), they should care quite a lot about these papers being cited, and cited by others not self-cited!

A few months ago, I was listening to the introductory talk of for a prestigious award from our national organization when one statement hit me: a physicist with 2000 or more citations is part of the 1% most cited physicists worldwide. There might have been a bit more to that statement but let’s work with it.

In fact, if you search for highly cited research on Google or any of your favorite search engines, this question (and many related ones) is the subject of intense research in itself. It seems, we human like to be able to put a number and rank on things. We also like to establish a hierarchy among things, even human being. 😉

So according to Wikipedia , from January 2000 to February 2010, the top 1% researchers in physics had about 2073 citations or better, or about slightly fewer than 210 citations per year over a 10-year period. That threshold changes with the field of research, of course, and can be much lower for other fields.

My first impression was that this seems low. However, as one digs deeper, one notices that most published manuscripts are not cited at all…Nature had a nice piece in 2014 about the TOP 100 papers . The infographics below is part of the article and is quite telling.

nature_top_100_papers_infographicV2_30.10.14

First, almost 44% of all published manuscripts are never cited. If you have even 1 citations for a manuscript you are already (almost!) in the top half (top 55.8%). With 10 or more citations, your work is now in the top 24% of the most cited work worldwide; this increased to the top 1.8% as you reach 100 or more citations. Main take home message: the average citation per manuscript is clearly below 10!

I also found a great blog post by Scott Weingart , which by restricting his analysis to a single journal, Scientometrics, got very similar results, with 50% of all published papers in that journal having fewer than 4 citations, 70% fewer than 7.

Out of curiosity, I decided to look at my own publications. Two tools are available Google Scholar and Thomson Reuters Web of Sciences. These data are presented in the figure below. As expected the number of manuscripts that gather over 100 citations are few. In my case it hovers between 2% to 5% depending on the tool used; both gives over 60% for 10 or more citations: 2 to 5 manuscripts out of a 100 get to be in the top 1.8% most cited manuscripts and 60 out of the same 100 are in the top quarter. Based on the discussion above, I suppose this is a good sign…

Still in Nature, there was yet another piece about the TOP 1% in science . Here is it claimed that fewer than 1% of all researchers have published consistently every year between 1996 and 2011, but those few who have commanded a “market share” of (i.e. are authors on) 41% of all published manuscripts in the same period (original manuscript in PLOS ONE ).

There is, of course, Thomson Reuters that has its own version of the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Mind” for a given year (e.g. 2014 ) and highly cited researchers . Here “hot papers” are defined by being in the top 0.1% (you’ve read correctly) by citations for their field of research and “influential researchers” are those having the largest numbers of these “hot papers” ( generally 15+ ). Before you ask, no I am not listed in the 3500 or so researchers described in there…

Now having said all that, more analysis of all of these “metrics” seems to indicate that there is only a weak correlation between the top 1% of highly cited researchers and Nobel Prize winners. As noted by the first Nature article cited above, many of the very highly cited papers are about tools or methods rather than fundamental scientific discoveries made with these tools or methods…

Here is a quick one that was part of a discussion among friends: two researchers have each a paper with 200+ citations. For the purpose of this blog post let’s say exactly 200 citations. One is for a paper published in what is considered a top journal, let’s say Science or Nature. The other for a manuscript published in a low impact factor journal (5-year IF of 2). Which of these two papers have had:

The greatest impact on science?
On their field of research?

Looking forward to reading you!

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Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis

Measuring Your Impact

Citation Analysis

Find your h-index.

Other Metrics/ Altmetrics
Journal Impact Factor (IF)
Selecting Publication Venues

About Citation Analysis

What is Citation Analysis?

The process whereby the impact or "quality" of an article is assessed by counting the number of times other authors mention it in their work.

Citation analysis invovles counting the number of times an article is cited by other works to measure the impact of a publicaton or author. The caviat however, there is no single citation analysis tools that collects all publications and their cited references. For a thorough analysis of the impact of an author or a publication, one needs to look in multiple databases to find all possible cited references. A number of resources are available at UIC that identify cited works including: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and other databases with limited citation data.

Citation Analysis - Why use it?

To find out how much impact a particular article or author has had, by showing which other authors cited the work within their own papers. The H-Index is one specific method utilizing citation analysis to determine an individuals impact.

Web of Science

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it. It i ndexes over 10,000 journals in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).
Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right.
To ensure accuracy for popular names, enter Univ Illinois in the middle search box, then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right. (You might have to add the second search box by clicking "add another field" before you enter the address)
Click on Search
a list of publications by that author name will appear. To the right of each citation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear. Click the number next to "times cited" to view the articles that have cited your article

Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it (limited to article written in 1996 and after). It indexes o ver 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers across the disciplines.

Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
Enter the name of the author in the search box. If you are using initials for the first and/or middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.).
To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the affiliation field.
If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining).
Once you click on the author's profile, a list of the publications will appear and to the right of each ctation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.
Click the number to view the articles that have cited your article

Dimensions (UIC does not subscribe but parts are free to use)

Indexes over 28000 journals
Does not display h-index in Dimensions but can calculate or if faculty, look in MyActivities
Includes Altmetrics score
Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides citation counts for articles found within Google Scholar. Depending on the discipline and cited article, it may find more cited references than Web of Science or Scopus because overall, Google Scholar is indexing more journals and more publication types than other databases. Google Scholar is not specific about what is included in its tool but information is available on how Google obtains its content . Limiting searches to only publications by a specific author name is complicated in Google Scholar. Using Google Scholar Citations and creating your own profile will make it easy for you to create a list of publications included in Google Scholar. Using your Google Scholar Citations account, you can see the citation counts for your publications and have GS calculate your h-index. (You can also search Google Scholar by author name and the title of an article to retrieve citation information for a specific article.)

Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar. Follow the prompt on the scrren to set up your profile. Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided. Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.

Try Harzing's Publish or Perish Tool in order to more selectively examine published works by a specific author.

Databases containing limited citation counts:

PubMed Central
Science Direct
SciFinder Scholar

About the H-index

The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output ( J.E. Hirsch ) The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist. The index is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications ( Wikipedia ) A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have at most h citations each.

Find your h-index at:

Below are instructions for obtaining your h-index from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it. It indexes over 12,000 journals in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. To find an author's h-index in WOS:

To ensure accuracy for popular names, add an additional search box and enter "Univ Illinois" and then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.
Click on Citation Report on the right hand corner of the results page. The H-index is on the right of the screen.
If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining). Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed.
If you have worked at more than one place, your name may appear twice with 2 separate h-index ratings. Select the check box next to each relevent profile, and click show documents.

Google Scholar

Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar. Follow the prompt on the screen to set up your profile. Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided. Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.
See Albert Einstein's
Harzing’s Publish or Perish (POP)
Publish or Perish Searches Google Scholar. After searching by your name, deselect from the list of articles retrieved those that you did not author. Your h-index will appear at the top of the tool. Note:This tool must be downloaded to use
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Format Your Paper & Cite Your Sources

APA Style, 7th Edition
Citing Sources
Avoid Plagiarism
MLA Style (8th/9th ed.)

APA Tutorial

Formatting your paper, headings organize your paper (2.27), video tutorials, reference list format (9.43).

Elements of a Reference

Reference Examples (Chapter 10)

Dois and urls (9.34-9.36), in-text citations.

In-Text Citations Format
In-Text Citations for Specific Source Types

NoodleTools

Chicago Style
Harvard Style
Other Styles
Annotated Bibliographies
How to Create an Attribution

What is APA Style?

APA style was created by social and behavioral scientists to standardize scientific writing. APA style is most often used in:

psychology,
social sciences (sociology, business), and

If you're taking courses in any of these areas, be prepared to use APA style.

For in-depth guidance on using this citation style, refer to Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , 7th ed. We have several copies available at the MJC Library at the call number BF 76.7 .P83 2020 .

APA Style, 7th ed.

In October 2019, the American Psychological Association made radical changes its style, especially with regard to the format and citation rules for students writing academic papers. Use this guide to learn how to format and cite your papers using APA Style, 7th edition.

You can start by viewing the video tutorial .

For help on all aspects of formatting your paper in APA Style, see The Essentials page on the APA Style website.

sans serif fonts such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode, or
serif fonts such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or normal (10-point) Computer Modern (the default font for LaTeX)
There are exceptions for the title page , tables , figures , footnotes , and displayed equations .
Margins : Use 1-in. margins on every side of the page.
Align the text of an APA Style paper to the left margin . Leave the right margin uneven, or “ragged.”
Do not use full justification for student papers.
Do not insert hyphens (manual breaks) in words at the end of line. However, it is acceptable if your word-processing program automatically inserts breaks in long hyperlinks (such as in a DOI or URL in a reference list entry).
Indent the first line of each paragraph of text 0.5 in . from the left margin. Use the tab key or the automatic paragraph-formatting function of your word-processing program to achieve the indentation (the default setting is likely already 0.5 in.). Do not use the space bar to create indentation.
There are exceptions for the title page , section labels , abstract , block quotations , headings , tables and figures , reference list , and appendices .

Paper Elements

Student papers generally include, at a minimum:

Title Page (2.3)
Text (2.11)
References (2.12)

Student papers may include additional elements such as tables and figures depending on the assignment. So, please check with your teacher!

Student papers generally DO NOT include the following unless your teacher specifically requests it:

Running head
Author note

For complete information on the order of pages , see the APA Style website.

Number your pages consecutively starting with page 1. Each section begins on a new page. Put the pages in the following order:

Page 1: Title page
Page 2: Abstract (if your teacher requires an abstract)
Page 3: Text
References begin on a new page after the last page of text
Footnotes begin on a new page after the references (if your teacher requires footnotes)
Tables begin each on a new page after the footnotes (if your teacher requires tables)
Figures begin on a new page after the tables (if your teacher requires figures)
Appendices begin on a new page after the tables and/or figures (if your teacher requires appendices)

Sample Papers With Built-In Instructions

To see what your paper should look like, check out these sample papers with built-in instructions.

APA Style uses five (5) levels of headings to help you organize your paper and allow your audience to identify its key points easily. Levels of headings establish the hierarchy of your sections just like you did in your paper outline.

APA tells us to use "only the number of headings necessary to differentiate distinct section in your paper." Therefore, the number of heading levels you create depends on the length and complexity of your paper.

See the chart below for instructions on formatting your headings:

Use Word to Format Your Paper:

Use Google Docs to Format Your Paper:

Placement: The reference list appears at the end of the paper, on its own page(s). If your research paper ends on page 8, your References begin on page 9.

Heading: Place the section label References in bold at the top of the page, centered.

Arrangement: Alphabetize entries by author's last name. If source has no named author, alphabetize by the title, ignoring A, An, or The. (9.44-9.48)

Spacing: Like the rest of the APA paper, the reference list is double-spaced throughout. Be sure NOT to add extra spaces between citations.

Indentation: To make citations easier to scan, add a hanging indent of 0.5 in. to any citation that runs more than one line. Use the paragraph-formatting function of your word processing program to create your hanging indent.

See Sample References Page (from APA Sample Student Paper):

Elements of Reference List Entries: (Chapter 9)

Where to find reference information for a journal article

References generally have four elements, each of which has a corresponding question for you to answer:

Author: Who is responsible for this work? (9.7-9.12)
Date: When was this work published? (9.13-9.17)
Title: What is this work called? (9.18-9.22)
Source: Where can I retrieve this work? (9.23-9.37)

By using these four elements and answering these four questions, you should be able to create a citation for any type of source.

For complete information on all of these elements, checkout the APA Style website.

This infographic shows the first page of a journal article. The locations of the reference elements are highlighted with different colors and callouts, and the same colors are used in the reference list entry to show how the entry corresponds to the source.

To create your references, you'll simple look for these elements in your source and put them together in your reference list entry.

American Psychological Association. Example of where to find reference information for a journal article [Infographic]. APA Style Center. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/basic-principles

Below you'll find two printable handouts showing APA citation examples. The first is an abbreviated list created by MJC Librarians. The second, which is more comprehensive, is from the APA Style website. Feel free to print these for your convenience or use the links to reference examples below:

APA Citation Examples Created by MJC Librarians for you.
Common References Examples (APA Handout) Printable handout from the American Psychological Association.
Journal Article
Magazine Article
Newspaper Article
Edited Book Chapter
Webpage on a Website

Classroom or Intranet Sources

Classroom Course Pack Materials
How to Cite ChatGPT
Dictionary Entry
Government Report
Legal References (Laws & Cases)
TED Talk References
Religious Works
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Archival Documents and Collections

You can view the entire Reference Examples website below and view a helpful guide to finding useful APA style topics easily:

APA Style: Reference Examples
Navigating the not-so-hidden treasures of the APA Style website
Missing Reference Information

Sometimes you won't be able to find all the elements required for your reference. In that case, see the instructions in Table 9.1 of the APA style manual in section 9.4 or the APA Style website below:

Direct Quotation of Material Without Page Numbers

The DOI or URL is the final component of a reference list entry. Because so much scholarship is available and/or retrieved online, most reference list entries end with either a DOI or a URL.

A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string that identifies content and provides a persistent link to its location on the internet. DOIs can be found in database records and the reference lists of published works.
A URL specifies the location of digital information on the internet and can be found in the address bar of your internet browser. URLs in references should link directly to the cited work when possible.

When to Include DOIs and URLs:

Include a DOI for all works that have a DOI, regardless of whether you used the online version or the print version.
If an online work has both a DOI and a URL, include only the DOI.
For works without DOIs from websites (not including academic research databases), provide a URL in the reference (as long as the URL will work for readers).
For works without DOIs from most academic research databases, do not include a URL or database information in the reference because these works are widely available. The reference should be the same as the reference for a print version of the work.
For works from databases that publish original, proprietary material available only in that database (such as the UpToDate database) or for works of limited circulation in databases (such as monographs in the ERIC database), include the name of the database or archive and the URL of the work. If the URL requires a login or is session-specific (meaning it will not resolve for readers), provide the URL of the database or archive home page or login page instead of the URL for the work. (See APA Section 9.30 for more information).
If the URL is no longer working or no longer provides readers access to the content you intend to cite, try to find an archived version using the Internet Archive , then use the archived URL. If there is no archived URL, do not use that resource.

Format of DOIs and URLs:

Your DOI should look like this:

https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040251

Follow these guidelines from the APA Style website.

APA Style uses the author–date citation system , in which a brief in-text citation points your reader to the full reference list entry at the end of your paper. The in-text citation appears within the body of the paper and briefly identifies the cited work by its author and date of publication. This method enables your reader to locate the corresponding entry in the alphabetical reference list at the end of your paper.

Each work you cite must appear in the reference list, and each work in the reference list must be cited in the text (or in a table, figure, footnote, or appendix) except for the following (See APA, 8.4):

Personal communications (8.9)
General mentions of entire websites, whole periodicals (8.22), and common software and apps (10.10) in the text do not require a citation or reference list entry.
The source of an epigraph does not usually appear in the reference list (8.35)
Quotations from your research participants do not need citations or reference list entries (8.36)
References included in a statistical meta-analysis, which are marked with an asterisk in the reference list, may be cited in the text (or not) at the author’s discretion. This exception is relevant only to authors who are conducting a meta-analysis (9.52).

Formatting Your In-Text Citations

Parenthetical and Narrative Citations: ( See APA Section 8.11)

In APA style you use the author-date citation system for citing references within your paper. You incorporate these references using either a parenthetical or a narrative style.

Parenthetical Citations

In parenthetical citations, the author name and publication date appear in parentheses, separated by a comma. (Jones, 2018)
A parenthetical citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence.
When the parenthetical citation is at the end of the sentence, put the period or other end punctuation after the closing parenthesis.
If there is no author, use the first few words of the reference list entry, usually the "Title" of the source: ("Autism," 2008) See APA 8.14
When quoting, always provide the author, year, and specific page citation or paragraph number for nonpaginated materials in the text (Santa Barbara, 2010, p. 243). See APA 8.13
For most citations, the parenthetical reference is placed BEFORE the punctuation: Magnesium can be effective in treating PMS (Haggerty, 2012).

Narrative Citations

In narrative citations, the author name or title of your source appears within your text and the publication date appears in parentheses immediately after the author name.

Santa Barbara (2010) noted a decline in the approval of disciplinary spanking of 26 percentage points from 1968 to 1994.

In-Text Citation Checklist

In-Text Citation Checklist Use this useful checklist from the American Psychological Association to ensure that you've created your in-text citations correctly.

In-Text Citations for Specific Types of Sources

Quotations from Research Participants

Personal Communications

Secondary Sources

Use NoodleTools to Cite Your Sources

NoodleTools can help you create your references and your in-text citations.

NoodleTools Express No sign in required . When you need one or two quick citations in MLA, APA, or Chicago style, simply generate them in NoodleTools Express then copy and paste what you need into your document. Note: Citations are not saved and cannot be exported to a word processor using NoodleTools Express.
NoodleTools (Login Full Database) This link opens in a new window Create and organize your research notes, share and collaborate on research projects, compose and error check citations, and complete your list of works cited in MLA, APA, or Chicago style using the full version of NoodleTools. You'll need to Create a Personal ID and password the first time you use NoodleTools.

See How to Use NoodleTools Express to Create a Citation in APA Format

Additional NoodleTools Help

NoodleTools Help Desk Look up questions and answers on the NoodleTools Web site
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Citations are a good way to determine the quality of research

Topical Debate
Published: 09 November 2020
Volume 43 , pages 1145–1148, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

what does the number of citations in a research paper indicate

Martin Caon 1 ,
Jamie Trapp 2 &
Clive Baldock 3

5644 Accesses

15 Citations

4 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction and overview: Clive Baldock, moderator

From the time that Henry Oldenburg created the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in the seventeenth century, scientists have endeavoured to share the results of their research efforts to a wider audience by publishing in scientific journals [ 1 ]. Since that time, many new journals have been founded that have given authors many options for publishing. This has been particularly significant in recent years, due to the growth of the internet and the availability of online and open access journals [ 2 , 3 ]. With such growth has come challenges. A significant issue for active research scientists is in keeping up-to-date with published research is due to the large body of research outputs, resulting in only a fraction of the literature being read and subsequently cited [ 4 ]. Due to many published papers going unnoticed or unread, many articles either never get cited or are only self-cited by the authors of the paper. When a paper is published, it has no immediate impact. However, many would contend that the number of times a paper has been subsequently cited is a good indicator of the impact of the paper and therefore the quality of the research [ 5 ].

In this Topical Debate, the previous and current Editors in Chief of this journal engage in a spirited and timely debate regarding citations and whether they are a good way to determine the quality of research. Footnote 1

Arguing for the proposition is Dr. Martin Caon, previous Journal Editor and from Flinders University. Dr Caon was born and grew up in Adelaide. His PhD in Medical Physics was undertaken at the University of South Australia and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Adelaide. This came after an undergraduate degree in Physics and Zoology, with honours in Zoology from Adelaide University, a Diploma in Education, and after a Master’s Degree in Science Education from Curtin University. Martin worked as a secondary school teacher in Mount Gambier and Adelaide for ten years before moving to Flinders University in 1988. There, the somewhat unusual undergraduate combination of Physics and Zoology proved useful in the teaching of physical science and anatomy and physiology to health sciences students.

While at Flinders University, his research interests were in the teaching of science to nursing students and in calculating, using Monte Carlo computer methods, the radiation dose to children from CT scanning. This latter work involved constructing anatomically correct mathematical models of child anatomy from medical images, initially using manual and then semi-automatic methods. Commencing in 2003, Martin was Associate Editor of this journal for three years and then Editor in Chief for twelve years. Martin continues as an Associate Editor, but retired from the Editor in Chief position and from Flinders University at the end of 2018. He has spent his retirement playing saxophone, hockey, tennis, bushwalking, running and spending time at his hobby farm and on matters concerning the Friends of the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park, of which he is president. He has also completed the recently published 3rd edition of his book: Examination Questions and Answers in Basic Anatomy and Physiology: 2900 multiple choice questions, which has been published by Springer. Additional writing projects have been an article describing the Friends’ work of monitoring Mogurnda clivicola , a land-locked fish found in the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park; and researching and writing the 115-year history of the Forestville Hockey Club.

Arguing against the Proposition is Jamie Trapp who is an Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). After completing his PhD at QUT in 2003 he moved to London and worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research at the Royal Marsden Hospital. In 2004 he commenced an academic position at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and in 2007 moved back to QUT into a similar position. In 2005 he commenced as an Associate Editor for this journal, in 2016 moved to a Deputy Editor role, and at the end of 2018 became Editor in Chief after Dr Caon’s retirement. He has published over 100 peer reviewed articles in various topics associated with radiation measurement and medical physics.

Opening statement—Martin Caon

How can one determine the quality of a quantum of research? A quantum in this case is an article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. One supported by a constituted National or International Society of Scientists sharing a common interest in some field of endeavour, such as this one.

Being published in a journal means that the manuscript has navigated the obstacle course of peer review and been adjudged to be sound, novel and of publishable quality by some members of the academic community. The historical gold standard to assess published articles has been: Be an expert in the field, read a hard copy and assess it in the light of your own expertise. Unfortunately, this method was only available to experts with access to the journal. Fortunately, science advances.

Electronic publication has provided novel, measurable ways to access research. This ability to measure is important. William Thomson said: “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind” [ 6 ]. Citation metrics mean that the assessment of research quality has left behind the dark ages of meagre and unsatisfactory kinds of knowledge. By expressing quality as a number, we know that we know something about it.

What metrics are available to us? The “number of reads” is a measure of scientific interest. However “Number of Downloads” is a better metric as it implies that the interest is sufficiently deep to require a sustained effort to understand the published work. The NoD is directly proportional to the quality of the article. Contrarily it may be argued that some scientists download rubbish articles to make a point, but people soon tire of reading nonsense, and will return to quality. In fact, the NoD may even underestimate interest as pdf copies electronically sent to colleagues, saves them downloading it anew.

A still better metric is the Number of Citations (NoC) made to published work. Scientists that cite an article are a subset of those that download it. Citing scientists have read the article, found it relevant and useful, and wish to associate their own work with it. Such scientists are themselves researchers who have the expertise to recognise important work. They are part of the community of cognoscenti. Their number can be counted. Now we can say that five scientists have noticed this work, or that 55 scientists approve of the work. We have an improved gold standard. Previously, few people knew how many experts had assessed an article. Its quality was a secret. Now everyone, including the authors, want to know.

The record of quality is permanent. The NoC stays on the record and increases with time making the importance of the work more apparent. Hence the NoC is flexible and responsive to changes in knowledge. It is unlikely that modern day scientists will overlook the work, or the work will be forgotten, as has happened in the past.

The metrification of quality allows for better metrics to be introduced. For example the Relative Citation Ratio measures quality at the article level [ 7 , 8 ]. This metric addresses the widely-acknowledged limitations of metrics such as raw citation count. RCR measures impact while also accounting for field of study and time of publication. This may be done by means of “expected citation rates”, derived from all citations to all contributions of the same type, published in the same year in the same ISI journal.

Just as cobalt machines have been relegated to the basement by modern linacs, x-ray film has been supplanted by digital radiography, CT scanning is now helical, and just as few medical physicists now know what a typewriter is, so the modern assessment of quality has improved and supplanted the historical method. The assessment of quality has been democratised because now Scientists can “vote” on the quality of a manuscript by citing it. Previously quality was assessed subjectively by individual scientists reading the article. Now quality assessment is a transparent collegial exercise in consensus by expert researchers and no longer at the whim of individual scientists.

Opening Statement—Jamie Trapp

The modern concept of citation indexing in research was introduced by Eugene Garfield in 1955, based on the earlier legal citation database Shepard’s Citations which dates back to 1873 [ 9 ]. The purpose of a legal citation database is to ensure that precedents set in legal cases can be found easily and used in later court decisions. Garfield argued that a similar citation database for academic research can be a useful tool to more easily find earlier research in a topic so that it can be built upon by researchers, rather than spending time rediscovering the same, and also that criticisms of earlier research are more easily available to inform future directions. In Garfield’s paper, the term Impact Factor is introduced relating to the number of citations an article or journal receives.

Garfield’s argument that the number of times a particular item/discovery/methodology is subsequently used to build later research [ 9 ] holds true, but simply counting all citations also includes the number of times an item has been criticised. For example, Radicchi showed that papers which have been criticised via Comments are cited more than non-commented papers, and more likely to be among the most cited of a journal [ 10 ]. Although a paper which is commented and criticised is not necessarily of low quality (and the criticism itself is often be debunked by author responses), there are certainly some instances where criticism is valid, yet this very act of criticising a research paper contributes to the ‘impact’ and therefore ‘quality’ via the citation.

It has recently been shown that 74% of citations occur in the Introduction and Discussion sections of papers [ 11 ]. A proper Introduction to a paper puts the present research into context in terms of recent progress in the topic and gaps in the knowledge that need to be filled, and likewise a good Discussion puts the results of the research into context. However, when a paper is cited in an Introduction or Discussion section one has to consider whether it truly informs the present research, or is just listed as a convention where other work is acknowledged, e.g. authors, particularly inexperienced authors, might feel compelled to have a long introduction citing many articles in order to follow the format of other papers they have seen. If these cited papers don’t directly lead to the work being presented, they are essentially just saying ‘these other people worked on something similar to us, but not quite the same’.

Papers which are truly influential, such as introducing a new process, procedure, or discovery are more likely to be cited in the Methodology, as this is where they influence future work. Therefore, one must ask the question of whether citation metrics should be based on all citations, or only the 26% which do not occur in Introductions or Discussions.

The above arguments can be taken further when considering the Matthew effect [ 12 ], which is very eloquently described with an example given by Ioannidis [ 13 ]. In short, the Matthew effect in relation to citations is the concept that a paper with many citations will gather even more citations than, say, a comparable similar paper with fewer or no citations (a self-propagating cycle). Ioannidis describes the situation of over simplified research tools, however the concept can generally be expanded to other situations such as inexperienced authors who might see certain papers being cited in Introductions, which then lead them to think that they should cite the same papers in their own Introductions as some type of unwritten convention in the field (even if not directly relevant), thus the citation cycle is established.

Finally, lack of citations does not mean a piece of work is necessarily of lower quality. The number of citations can be influenced by numerous factors [ 14 ], including age of the article (even Nobel prize winning papers started with 0 citations), discipline norms, access [ 15 ], self-citations (and self-citation schemes) [ 16 ], and even reviewer-coerced citations [ 17 ].

Rebuttal—Martin Caon

Implicit in the statement that “citations are a good way to determine the quality of research” is that the citations are “appropriate” (and appropriately placed within the article). A spurious citation will leave the reader wondering at the quality of the article being read and perhaps to its dismissal as unworthy of study. An article that is cited in the Introduction as reporting a novel result cannot be said to be less worthy of citation than one cited in the Methods section for, say, the kilovoltage selected on the machine. If inappropriate, the snowballing of citations, because “everyone is citing it”, is noticed and dismissed by clever researchers—and that should include all of us.

Peer criticism is an essential part of improving the quality of research and by attracting criticism, the shortcomings of research are uncovered and avoided in future. This improves quality. So while a critical citation may not flag the cited paper as a quality one, it contributes to future quality.

My esteemed colleague contends that lack of citation does not imply lack of quality. I agree, but that is not the proposition we are debating.

Rebuttal—Jamie Trapp

I acknowledge the excellent point of my esteemed colleague that the number of reads and number of downloads of an article is a good measure of its scientific interest. Likewise, the use of normalised citation metrics such as relative citation ratio and others including relative citation impact, relative citation rate, etc. can allow for variations between different research fields.

However, the premise of citation counting is that the total number of citations received is the sole indicator of the quality or impact of a piece of research, regardless of whether the citation is positive, negative, or just there to fill in the introduction and bibliography.

Citation counting is an easy thing to measure, originating from the time when bibliometrics started (when tables of contents and bibliographies were the easiest data to analyse with the tools at the time). To make citation counting appear more meaningful (or perhaps hide the flaws of the system), contemporary research managers and organisations have chosen to use words like ‘research quality’ and ‘impact’ to disguise the fact that it is merely a ‘total citation count’, thereby surreptitiously giving a new, different, definition to these words when the consumer assumes the older, traditional meaning. This is classic case of cognitive bias (imagine, for example, if ‘quality’ suddenly changed to mean ‘word count’, then very long articles would be considered more important than succinct articles, and important works in currently high ranking journals with strict word limits, of say 1500 words, would suffer).

I agree with my esteemed colleague in his point that times change and I would take this a little further. Surely, with the development of data mining techniques a better measure of quality and impact can now be found—there is no longer the need to stick with the ‘easy’ solution.

Note: To support this debate and provide data for the future, a separate article has been produced in this Issue [ 18 ]. The article is intentionally of obvious and deliberate poor quality (in the traditional sense of the word). The purpose of the other article is to act as an experiment within itself, to see if a poor article gains citations how this would be considered for ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ in the contemporary sense used in this debate.

Contributors to Topical Debates are selected for their knowledge and expertise. Their position for or against a proposition may or may not reflect their personal opinions.

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Trapp JV (2020) Citations equals research quality? If you agree then don’t cite this stupid, totally terrible article. Phys Eng Sci Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-020-00942-8

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Caon, M., Trapp, J. & Baldock, C. Citations are a good way to determine the quality of research. Phys Eng Sci Med 43 , 1145–1148 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-020-00941-9

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v.37(7); 2022 May

Measures of Impact for Journals, Articles, and Authors

Elizabeth m suelzer.

1 Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI USA

Jeffrey L. Jackson

2 Zablocki VA Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI USA

Journals and authors hope the work they do is important and influential. Over time, a number of measures have been developed to measure author and journal impact. These impact factor instruments are expanding and can be difficult to understand. The varying measures provide different perspectives and have varying strengths and weaknesses. A complete picture of impact for individual researchers and journals requires using multiple measures and does not fully capture all aspects of influence. There are only a few players in the scholarly publishing world that collect data on article citations: Clarivate Analytics, Elsevier, and Google Scholar (Table (Table1). 1 ). Measures of influence for authors and journals based on article citations use one of these sources and may vary slightly because of differing journal coverage.

Citation Databases

Individual Authors

Researchers make contributions to their fields in many ways: through education, advocacy, mentorship, collaboration, reviewing grants and articles, editorial activities, and leadership. For better or worse, their impact is usually based on the number of research articles they publish and how often those articles are cited. Some activities, such as writing editorials for leading journals, book chapters, or other clinical texts; testifying before Congress; or helping to shape government or health system policy, can be highly influential, but not credited in these measures of influence.

A common problem authors have in determining their impact is duplicate names, either from being inconsistent in the name they use (e.g., Jackson JL vs Jackson J) or name changes. There are several ways to establish a persistent and unique digital identifier. Researchers should take advantage of all.

ORCID ( www.orcid.org )

Many funders require an ORCID identifier as part of grant submission. ORCID is free, and all authors can sign up to create a unique identifier. ORCID does not track measures of impact, but cooperates with other sites that do by maintaining a list of publications that authors can review for completeness and accuracy.

ResearcherID ( www.researcherid.com )

This site provides a unique identifier and pulls information from Web of Science (Clarivate) to generate an h -index. It has a dashboard that generates a Web of Science author impact plot, provides authors a year-by-year report on impact, and generates a “citation” map that shows the location of citations. ResearcherID is also used by Publons, another Clarivate product, that tracks peer review and editorial activity. Access requires a subscription.

Scopus and Web of Science

Scopus and Web of Science are independent sites that create unique identifiers for authors based on proprietary software. Identifiers are automatically assigned and may result in the creation of more than one identifier, particularly if authors have had multiple affiliations, have a common name, have changed names, or have been inconsistent in their name. Authors can review the identifiers assigned and merge different listings. Access to these databases requires a subscription.

In addition, authors can create a Google Scholar account, which will also track and assess author impact. Google Scholar is free. Authors should regularly review their account to make sure their article list is accurate.

Measures of Impact for Authors

There are a number of different measures of individual author impact; each has strengths and weaknesses (Table (Table2). 2 ). All are limited in that they do not account for author effort and order. Most can be skewed by self-citation and favor those who have been publishing longer. 2

Author Measures of Influence

H-Index , developed by Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005, is defined as the number of published papers that have been cited at least h times. 3 An h -index of 40 means th.e author has 40 articles cited at least 40 times. This simple metric is widely used for evaluating an authors’ impact. Citation databases like Web of Science, Scopus (Elsevier), and Google Scholar provide h -index information in their author profiles, though the reported h -index may vary due to citation coverage. The h -index favors authors that publish a continuous stream of papers with persistent, above-average impact. It measures the cumulative impact of an author’s work and combines quantity and quality. However, it does not account for the author effort and order, is biased against early-career researchers with fewer publications, and can be skewed by self-citation.

G-Index , created in 2006 by Leo Egghe, is defined as the largest number such that the top “ g ” articles received together at least g 2 citations. 4 This metric favors highly cited articles; a single highly cited article will increase the g -index considerably, while only increasing the h -index by 1.

i-10-Index , calculated by Google Scholar, is a straightforward metric that shows the number of publications with at least 10 citations.

Measures of Impact for Individual Articles

This is an NIH dashboard of bibliometrics for articles. iCite has three modules: Influence, Translation, and Open Citations. Influence is based on a relative citation ratio (RCR), comparing article citations to the median for NIH–funded publications, the value of which is set at 1.0. Among NIH–funded studies, the 90 th percentile for RCR is 3.81. Among all studies, the 90 th percentile is 2.24. Individual paper influence is reported and can be used to select manuscripts that best represent one’s work. Translation provides a measure of translation from bench to bedside by breaking down whether most of the author’s publications are molecular/cellular, animal, or human. Citations provide a count of the total citations and give citation statistics (mean, median, SE, maximum) as well as a list of the citing articles for each paper.

Alternative measures of influence

There are measures of influence of individual articles that are not based on citations. They provide a snapshot of article impact in a number of alternate venues, such as public policy documents, news articles, blogs, and social media.

Altmetric tracks more than 15 different sources, including public policy documents, news articles, blog posts, mentions in syllabi, reference managers, and social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. The results are weighted; some sources, such as news articles, get greater weight. For example, in 2020, the weights of the various sources were news stories: 8, blogs: 5, Q&A forums: 2.5, Twitter: 1, Google: 1, and Facebook: 0.25. Altmetrics can be displayed as a “badge,” a symbol with a number in the middle of a circle with the strands colored to reflect the elements that went into the score. Researchers can sign up to create an altmetric badge for their articles ( www.altmetric.com ). To create a badge, the article must have a DOI number. Altmetrics for any specific article reflects popular interest in the topic rather than scientific importance. At JGIM, article altmetrics do not correlate with citations. Altmetrics can accumulate quickly; many metrics, such as Twitter and Facebook mentions, tend to occur within days of publication, while citations can take years. Altmetrics can be applied to scholarly products other than research publications, such as curricula and software. However, altmetrics can be gamed; “popular” topics tend to get more play than others. It is still unclear how to use altmetrics; most rank and tenure committees do not include these measures in promotion deliberations.

PlumX Analytics

PlumX gathers metrics into 5 categories: citations, usage, captures, mentions, and social media. Citations include traditional citations as well as ones that may have societal impact, such as policy documents. Usage measures views, downloads, and measures of how often the article is read. Captures indicate that a reader is planning on coming back to the article; it can indicate future citations. Mentions refer to news articles, blog posts, and other public mentions of the paper. PlumX Social Media refers to tweets and Facebook likes and shares, among several sources. It provides a picture of how much public attention articles are getting. PlumX analytics suffer from the same issues as altmetrics and citations. PlumX analytics are embedded in several platforms, including Mendeley, Science Direct, and Scopus and on many open-access journal platforms.

Measures of Impact for Journals

Historically, there were many reasons why certain journals rose to the top: highly respected editors, a long publishing history, and a track record of influential work policy makers and clinicians cared about. In 1975, Thompson Reuters debuted SCI Journal Citation Reports , ranking journals based on article citations. 5 Subsequently, this has been the primary basis for journal prestige.

Journal evaluation metrics that use citation data favor some disciplines over others. Disciplines vary widely in the amount of research output, the number of citations that are normally included in papers, and the tendency of a discipline to cite recent articles. 6 For example, Acta Poetica focuses on literary criticism. Its impact factor would be a poor measure of the journal’s influence. In addition, one needs to consider where the evaluation tool is collecting their data. Databases like Web of Science and Scopus may have stronger coverage of some disciplines, impacting the citation metrics that are generated. 6

Some resources assign journals to subject categories, making it possible to compare journals within their discipline. A good analogy is points scored in sporting events. Seven points in American football is a poor offensive outing, while 7 points in European football is a juggernaut. Comparing journals within the same discipline provides better information about the journal’s relative importance.

Journal Citation Reports

Journal Impact Factor (JIF). This is published annually by Clarivate and uses citation data from Web of Science. It has been the “gold standard” for measuring journal impact since its creation. 7 Journal editors nervously await release of their impact factor every summer. The JIF is calculated by dividing the total number of citations in the previous 2 years by the number of “source” articles published the following year. JGIM had 2810 citations in 2020 for articles published in 2018 and 2019; 548 of these articles were categorized as source material. Dividing 2810/548 yields our 2020 impact factor of 5.128. Not everything journals publish is considered source material. Clarivate does not provide guidance to journals on how they decide what types of material to count. In general, letters and editorials are not included. JGIM falls in the Medicine, General & Internal and the Health Care Sciences & Services categories, ranking 27 th and 11 th , respectively, in each. Seeking high JIF has led some journals to reduce the number of articles they publish, increase the amount of non-source papers, and focus on work they believe will be highly cited. The JIF is also susceptible to journal self-citation.

Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) is a normalized metric that debuted in 2021; a score of 1.0 means that journal articles were cited on average the same as other journals in that category. 8 JGIM has a JCI of 1.48 (Table (Table3), 3 ), meaning we have a 48% more citation impact than other journals in our category. Based on the JCI, JGIM ranks 23 rd in Medicine, General & Internal and 15 th in Health Care Sciences & Services.

Journal Measures of Impact

* Source articles: articles that are counted in the denominator

5-Year Impact Factor is the average number of times articles published in the previous 5 years were cited in the indexed year. It gives information on the sustained influence of journal publications. JGIM’s 2020 score was 6.070, meaning that articles published in 2014–2019 were cited an average of 6 times in 2020.

Immediacy Index is the number of citations that occur in the year of publication. Journals with high immediacy index scores are rapidly cited. JGIM has a score of 1.861. This measure has been criticized for penalizing articles published later in the year.

Eigenfactor Score , a metric created in 2007 by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West of the University of Washington, is based on the number of times articles from a journal over the past 5 years have been cited in the indexed year and gives citations in highly cited journals more weight than lesser cited ones. Self-citations by the journal are excluded. JGIM’s 2020 eigenfactor score was 0.02895. This measure suffers from being difficult to understand.

The Normalized Eigenfactor Score provides a normalized metric of the Eigenfactor Score, setting a score of 1 as the average for all journals. Like the Eigenfactor Score, citations that come from highly cited journals carry more weight than citations from less cited journals and journal self-citations are excluded. JGIM’s score is 6.07, meaning that JGIM was sixfold more influential than the average journal in the Web of Science database.

Article Influence . This measure is calculated by dividing the Eigenfactor Score by the number of a journal’s articles over the first 5 years after publication. It is calculated by multiplying the Eigenfactor Score by 0.01 and dividing by the number of articles in the journal, then normalized as a fraction of all articles in all publications, such that the mean is 1.0. JGIM’s most recent influence score is 2.579. This indicates that JGIM is more than twice as influential as the average journal.

CiteScore is calculated by dividing the number of citations from documents (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and data papers) over the previous 4 years by the number of articles indexed in Scopus published by the journal during those years. JGIM’s CiteScore is 4.6. Cite scores are calculated on a monthly basis. Among 122 internal medicine journals, JGIM is ranked 40 th by the CiteScore.

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) also uses Scopus data and weights citations according to the prestige of the citing journal, taking into account the thematic closeness of the citing and cited journals. 9 It is calculated based on citations in 1 year to articles published in the previous 3 years. JGIM’s SJR is 1.746, which puts us 13 th on the list of “internal medicine” journals.

SCImago H-Index calculates the number of journal articles ( h ) that have been cited at least h times. It is the same calculation used to evaluate authors; SCImago calculates the journal h -index using Scopus citation data. JGIM has an h -index of 180, meaning that 180 of our articles have been cited more than 180 times. The h -index measures the productivity and impact of journal publications.

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) compares each journal’s citations per article with the citations expected in its field. It allows a comparison of the journal’s impact across fields, because it adjusts for the likelihood of journal articles in that field being cited. JGIM’s SNIP is 1.471 which ranks us as 23 rd among 112 internal medicine journals.

Google Scholar

H5-index. Google Scholar calculates an H5-index for journals, which is the number of articles in the last 5 years with at least h citations. Google Scholar classifies JGIM as a primary care health journal. JGIM has an H5-index of 65, making it the top-ranked journal in this category. Google Scholar does not make available the citation sources; consequently, it is difficult to tell how complete the data is.

Journal Altmetrics

Like individual articles, altmetrics can be generated for journals. They have the same advantages and disadvantages as individual article altmetrics. In 2020, JGIM had 2.5 million downloads, 61 k linkouts, and 33 k social media mentions. Journal editors may have a poor understanding of altmetrics and struggle to know what to do with the data. Altimetrics reflect popular interest. For example, in 2020, the COVID pandemic captured public interest; articles focused on aspects of the pandemic received considerable public attention. For JGIM, the top altimetric article examined the impact of masking on preventing the spread of COVID and had an altmetric score of 4829.

JGIM is interested in these measures to ensure that we (like our authors) are having an impact. However, we are not obsessed on these measures and will continue to put forward what feels most important and relevant for academic general internists.

Declarations

The authors had no conflicts of interest with this article.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

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Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered throughout the MLA Handbook and in chapter 7 of the MLA Style Manual . Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations . This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase. Usually, the simplest way to do this is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence (i.e., just before the period). However, as the examples below will illustrate, there are situations where it makes sense to put the parenthetical elsewhere in the sentence, or even to leave information out.

General Guidelines

The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1) upon the source medium (e.g. print, web, DVD) and (2) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited page.
Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads . Oxford UP, 1967.

In-text citations for print sources with known author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry on the Works Cited page:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method . University of California Press, 1966.

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

If a source uses a labeling or numbering system other than page numbers, such as a script or poetry, precede the citation with said label. When citing a poem, for instance, the parenthetical would begin with the word “line”, and then the line number or range. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. “In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

Longer labels, such as chapters (ch.) and scenes (sc.), should be abbreviated.

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name, following these guidelines.

Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

Titles longer than a standard noun phrase should be shortened into a noun phrase by excluding articles. For example, To the Lighthouse would be shortened to Lighthouse .

If the title cannot be easily shortened into a noun phrase, the title should be cut after the first clause, phrase, or punctuation:

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title appears in the parenthetical citation, and the full title of the article appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry on the Works Cited page. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs . 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

If the title of the work begins with a quotation mark, such as a title that refers to another work, that quote or quoted title can be used as the shortened title. The single quotation marks must be included in the parenthetical, rather than the double quotation.

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's The Communist Manifesto . In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source (for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection), cite the author of the internal source (i.e., the article or essay). For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in Nature in 1921, you might write something like this:

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited .

Citing authors with same last names

Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:

Citing a work by multiple authors

For a source with two authors, list the authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations , vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine , vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Citing multiple works by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author :

Citing two books by the same author :

Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Citing multivolume works

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number(s). (If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses.)

Citing the Bible

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter, and verse. For example:

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation:

John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Citing indirect sources

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch. A period follows the name (e.g., JAMES.) . After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Usually, the author and title of the source can be given in a signal phrase before quoting the excerpt, so the concluding parenthetical will often just contain location information like page numbers or act/scene indicators.

Here is an example from O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

With more and more scholarly work published on the Internet, you may have to cite sources you found in digital environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for scholarly work (reference the OWL's Evaluating Sources of Information resource), some Web sources are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet sources, remember that your citation must reference the source on your Works Cited page.

Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources because of the absence of page numbers. However, these sorts of entries often do not require a page number in the parenthetical citation. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:

Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
Do not provide paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like CNN.com or Forbes.com, as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Two types of non-print sources you may encounter are films and lectures/presentations:

In the two examples above “Herzog” (a film’s director) and “Yates” (a presentor) lead the reader to the first item in each citation’s respective entry on the Works Cited page:

Herzog, Werner, dir. Fitzcarraldo . Perf. Klaus Kinski. Filmverlag der Autoren, 1982.

Yates, Jane. "Invention in Rhetoric and Composition." Gaps Addressed: Future Work in Rhetoric and Composition, CCCC, Palmer House Hilton, 2002. Address.

Electronic sources

Electronic sources may include web pages and online news or magazine articles:

In the first example (an online magazine article), the writer has chosen not to include the author name in-text; however, two entries from the same author appear in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes both the author’s last name and the article title in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader to the appropriate entry on the Works Cited page (see below).

In the second example (a web page), a parenthetical citation is not necessary because the page does not list an author, and the title of the article, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide,” is used as a signal phrase within the sentence. If the title of the article was not named in the sentence, an abbreviated version would appear in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Both corresponding Works Cited entries are as follows:

Taylor, Rumsey. "Fitzcarraldo." Slant , 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2009.

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL , 2 Aug. 2016, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed 2 April 2018.

Multiple citations

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

Time-based media sources

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

When a citation is not needed

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations, or common knowledge (For example, it is expected that U.S. citizens know that George Washington was the first President.). Remember that citing sources is a rhetorical task, and, as such, can vary based on your audience. If you’re writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, you may need to deal with expectations of what constitutes “common knowledge” that differ from common norms.

Other Sources

The MLA Handbook describes how to cite many different kinds of authors and content creators. However, you may occasionally encounter a source or author category that the handbook does not describe, making the best way to proceed can be unclear.

In these cases, it's typically acceptable to apply the general principles of MLA citation to the new kind of source in a way that's consistent and sensible. A good way to do this is to simply use the standard MLA directions for a type of source that resembles the source you want to cite.

You may also want to investigate whether a third-party organization has provided directions for how to cite this kind of source. For example, Norquest College provides guidelines for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers⁠ —an author category that does not appear in the MLA Handbook . In cases like this, however, it's a good idea to ask your instructor or supervisor whether using third-party citation guidelines might present problems.

Bibliometrics - Impact Factor, H-index, and More: How to Determine the number of citations for an article

What are Bibliometrics?
How to Determine the number of citations for an article
How to Determine the number of citations for an author
How to determine the Impact Factor of a Journal

Introduction

There are a number of different databases available to determine how many times an article has been cited by other articles.

Both Scopus and Web of Science can be used to find this information. Google scholar can also provide this information. Keep in mind the number of citations of each of these databases will be different because of the way they pull the citation information.

Below we will provide instructions on how to use the databases to gather this information

Find Number of Citations on Scopus

How to find the number of citations on scopus.

Go to the CSHL Library website.
From there you can click on Resources.
Then click on Databases & Protocols.
Then chose Scopus.
Type in the Search Documents bar what article you would like to find or some key words.
To the right is the Cited by column with a number, which represents the number of citations. If the number is greater than 0 then you can click on it and it will give you the papers that cited the one you had searched.

Find Number of Citations on Web of Science

How to find the number of citations on web of science.

Then chose Web of Science.
To the right of the article is the number of citations. If you click on the article, to the right, there is an overview of the references.
If you click on the number, the papers that cited the article will be displayed.

Find Number of Citations on Google Scholar

How to find the number of citations on google scholar.

Go to the Google Scholar.
Below the article is the number of citations. It says Cited by...
If you click on the Cited by..., the links of the articles that cited what you searched for will be displayed.

Subject Guide

<< Previous: h-index
Next: How to Determine the number of citations for an author >>
Last Updated: Sep 23, 2022 4:17 PM
URL: https://cshl.libguides.com/bibliometrics

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13.1 Formatting a Research Paper

Learning objectives.

Identify the major components of a research paper written using American Psychological Association (APA) style.
Apply general APA style and formatting conventions in a research paper.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use APA style , the documentation and formatting style followed by the American Psychological Association, as well as MLA style , from the Modern Language Association. There are a few major formatting styles used in academic texts, including AMA, Chicago, and Turabian:

AMA (American Medical Association) for medicine, health, and biological sciences
APA (American Psychological Association) for education, psychology, and the social sciences
Chicago—a common style used in everyday publications like magazines, newspapers, and books
MLA (Modern Language Association) for English, literature, arts, and humanities
Turabian—another common style designed for its universal application across all subjects and disciplines

While all the formatting and citation styles have their own use and applications, in this chapter we focus our attention on the two styles you are most likely to use in your academic studies: APA and MLA.

If you find that the rules of proper source documentation are difficult to keep straight, you are not alone. Writing a good research paper is, in and of itself, a major intellectual challenge. Having to follow detailed citation and formatting guidelines as well may seem like just one more task to add to an already-too-long list of requirements.

Following these guidelines, however, serves several important purposes. First, it signals to your readers that your paper should be taken seriously as a student’s contribution to a given academic or professional field; it is the literary equivalent of wearing a tailored suit to a job interview. Second, it shows that you respect other people’s work enough to give them proper credit for it. Finally, it helps your reader find additional materials if he or she wishes to learn more about your topic.

Furthermore, producing a letter-perfect APA-style paper need not be burdensome. Yes, it requires careful attention to detail. However, you can simplify the process if you keep these broad guidelines in mind:

Work ahead whenever you can. Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” includes tips for keeping track of your sources early in the research process, which will save time later on.
Get it right the first time. Apply APA guidelines as you write, so you will not have much to correct during the editing stage. Again, putting in a little extra time early on can save time later.
Use the resources available to you. In addition to the guidelines provided in this chapter, you may wish to consult the APA website at http://www.apa.org or the Purdue University Online Writing lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu , which regularly updates its online style guidelines.

General Formatting Guidelines

This chapter provides detailed guidelines for using the citation and formatting conventions developed by the American Psychological Association, or APA. Writers in disciplines as diverse as astrophysics, biology, psychology, and education follow APA style. The major components of a paper written in APA style are listed in the following box.

These are the major components of an APA-style paper:

Body, which includes the following:

Headings and, if necessary, subheadings to organize the content
In-text citations of research sources
References page

All these components must be saved in one document, not as separate documents.

The title page of your paper includes the following information:

Title of the paper
Author’s name
Name of the institution with which the author is affiliated
Header at the top of the page with the paper title (in capital letters) and the page number (If the title is lengthy, you may use a shortened form of it in the header.)

List the first three elements in the order given in the previous list, centered about one third of the way down from the top of the page. Use the headers and footers tool of your word-processing program to add the header, with the title text at the left and the page number in the upper-right corner. Your title page should look like the following example.

Beyond the Hype: Evaluating Low-Carb Diets cover page

The next page of your paper provides an abstract , or brief summary of your findings. An abstract does not need to be provided in every paper, but an abstract should be used in papers that include a hypothesis. A good abstract is concise—about one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty words—and is written in an objective, impersonal style. Your writing voice will not be as apparent here as in the body of your paper. When writing the abstract, take a just-the-facts approach, and summarize your research question and your findings in a few sentences.

In Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” , you read a paper written by a student named Jorge, who researched the effectiveness of low-carbohydrate diets. Read Jorge’s abstract. Note how it sums up the major ideas in his paper without going into excessive detail.

Write an abstract summarizing your paper. Briefly introduce the topic, state your findings, and sum up what conclusions you can draw from your research. Use the word count feature of your word-processing program to make sure your abstract does not exceed one hundred fifty words.

Depending on your field of study, you may sometimes write research papers that present extensive primary research, such as your own experiment or survey. In your abstract, summarize your research question and your findings, and briefly indicate how your study relates to prior research in the field.

Margins, Pagination, and Headings

APA style requirements also address specific formatting concerns, such as margins, pagination, and heading styles, within the body of the paper. Review the following APA guidelines.

Use these general guidelines to format the paper:

Set the top, bottom, and side margins of your paper at 1 inch.
Use double-spaced text throughout your paper.
Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, in a legible size (10- to 12-point).
Use continuous pagination throughout the paper, including the title page and the references section. Page numbers appear flush right within your header.
Section headings and subsection headings within the body of your paper use different types of formatting depending on the level of information you are presenting. Additional details from Jorge’s paper are provided.

Begin formatting the final draft of your paper according to APA guidelines. You may work with an existing document or set up a new document if you choose. Include the following:

Your title page
The abstract you created in Note 13.8 “Exercise 1”
Correct headers and page numbers for your title page and abstract

APA style uses section headings to organize information, making it easy for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought and to know immediately what major topics are covered. Depending on the length and complexity of the paper, its major sections may also be divided into subsections, sub-subsections, and so on. These smaller sections, in turn, use different heading styles to indicate different levels of information. In essence, you are using headings to create a hierarchy of information.

The following heading styles used in APA formatting are listed in order of greatest to least importance:

Section headings use centered, boldface type. Headings use title case, with important words in the heading capitalized.
Subsection headings use left-aligned, boldface type. Headings use title case.
The third level uses left-aligned, indented, boldface type. Headings use a capital letter only for the first word, and they end in a period.
The fourth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are boldfaced and italicized.
The fifth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are italicized and not boldfaced.

Visually, the hierarchy of information is organized as indicated in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” .

Table 13.1 Section Headings

A college research paper may not use all the heading levels shown in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” , but you are likely to encounter them in academic journal articles that use APA style. For a brief paper, you may find that level 1 headings suffice. Longer or more complex papers may need level 2 headings or other lower-level headings to organize information clearly. Use your outline to craft your major section headings and determine whether any subtopics are substantial enough to require additional levels of headings.

Working with the document you developed in Note 13.11 “Exercise 2” , begin setting up the heading structure of the final draft of your research paper according to APA guidelines. Include your title and at least two to three major section headings, and follow the formatting guidelines provided above. If your major sections should be broken into subsections, add those headings as well. Use your outline to help you.

Because Jorge used only level 1 headings, his Exercise 3 would look like the following:

Citation Guidelines

In-text citations.

Throughout the body of your paper, include a citation whenever you quote or paraphrase material from your research sources. As you learned in Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , the purpose of citations is twofold: to give credit to others for their ideas and to allow your reader to follow up and learn more about the topic if desired. Your in-text citations provide basic information about your source; each source you cite will have a longer entry in the references section that provides more detailed information.

In-text citations must provide the name of the author or authors and the year the source was published. (When a given source does not list an individual author, you may provide the source title or the name of the organization that published the material instead.) When directly quoting a source, it is also required that you include the page number where the quote appears in your citation.

This information may be included within the sentence or in a parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence, as in these examples.

Epstein (2010) points out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Here, the writer names the source author when introducing the quote and provides the publication date in parentheses after the author’s name. The page number appears in parentheses after the closing quotation marks and before the period that ends the sentence.

Addiction researchers caution that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (Epstein, 2010, p. 137).

Here, the writer provides a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence that includes the author’s name, the year of publication, and the page number separated by commas. Again, the parenthetical citation is placed after the closing quotation marks and before the period at the end of the sentence.

As noted in the book Junk Food, Junk Science (Epstein, 2010, p. 137), “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive.”

Here, the writer chose to mention the source title in the sentence (an optional piece of information to include) and followed the title with a parenthetical citation. Note that the parenthetical citation is placed before the comma that signals the end of the introductory phrase.

David Epstein’s book Junk Food, Junk Science (2010) pointed out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Another variation is to introduce the author and the source title in your sentence and include the publication date and page number in parentheses within the sentence or at the end of the sentence. As long as you have included the essential information, you can choose the option that works best for that particular sentence and source.

Citing a book with a single author is usually a straightforward task. Of course, your research may require that you cite many other types of sources, such as books or articles with more than one author or sources with no individual author listed. You may also need to cite sources available in both print and online and nonprint sources, such as websites and personal interviews. Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.2 “Citing and Referencing Techniques” and Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provide extensive guidelines for citing a variety of source types.

Writing at Work

APA is just one of several different styles with its own guidelines for documentation, formatting, and language usage. Depending on your field of interest, you may be exposed to additional styles, such as the following:

MLA style. Determined by the Modern Languages Association and used for papers in literature, languages, and other disciplines in the humanities.
Chicago style. Outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style and sometimes used for papers in the humanities and the sciences; many professional organizations use this style for publications as well.
Associated Press (AP) style. Used by professional journalists.

References List

The brief citations included in the body of your paper correspond to the more detailed citations provided at the end of the paper in the references section. In-text citations provide basic information—the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number if necessary—while the references section provides more extensive bibliographical information. Again, this information allows your reader to follow up on the sources you cited and do additional reading about the topic if desired.

The specific format of entries in the list of references varies slightly for different source types, but the entries generally include the following information:

The name(s) of the author(s) or institution that wrote the source
The year of publication and, where applicable, the exact date of publication
The full title of the source
For books, the city of publication
For articles or essays, the name of the periodical or book in which the article or essay appears
For magazine and journal articles, the volume number, issue number, and pages where the article appears
For sources on the web, the URL where the source is located

The references page is double spaced and lists entries in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. If an entry continues for more than one line, the second line and each subsequent line are indented five spaces. Review the following example. ( Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provides extensive guidelines for formatting reference entries for different types of sources.)

In APA style, book and article titles are formatted in sentence case, not title case. Sentence case means that only the first word is capitalized, along with any proper nouns.

Key Takeaways

Following proper citation and formatting guidelines helps writers ensure that their work will be taken seriously, give proper credit to other authors for their work, and provide valuable information to readers.
Working ahead and taking care to cite sources correctly the first time are ways writers can save time during the editing stage of writing a research paper.
APA papers usually include an abstract that concisely summarizes the paper.
APA papers use a specific headings structure to provide a clear hierarchy of information.
In APA papers, in-text citations usually include the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication.
In-text citations correspond to entries in the references section, which provide detailed bibliographical information about a source.

FRONT MATTER
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Number System: In-Text Citation

Generally, the number system is favored in fields where you typically report experimental field or lab work. Technical fields such as materials science, aerospace engineering, and chemistry tend to favor the number system.

When you use the number system, your responsibility is to indicate in your text—either in parentheses or brackets—a number that corresponds to a source on your references page. The first source you cite in your text receives the number 1, the second number 2, and so on. If you repeat a reference to a source later in the text, it retains its original number—thus, all references to source number 4 receive a 4 after them in parentheses or brackets. You delay the appropriate punctuation until after the parentheses or brackets:

If the load on the thrust bearing can be decreased by some means, the life of the turbodrill can be significantly increased (1).

Many authors prefer to identify the source at the beginning of the reference, perhaps including the author’s name directly in the text:

Gould et al. (5) found a clear relation between. . .

The number system is especially handy for citing equations, because you can simply insert the citation number logically as you introduce the equation to avoid confusion with any other numbers:

The line’s slope is used in the following equation (7) to calculate. . .

Other In-Text Citation Practices

Slight but important mechanical differences exist among in-text citation practices, in particular when you are trying to conform to a specific style, such as MLA (Modern Language Association) or APA (American Psychological Association). For example, MLA style requires you to provide the page number of your citation in-text, but not the year, while APA style asks you to place a comma between author and year. Please feel welcome to explore all of these nuances for yourself if you wish, and recognize that some professors will insist that you conform to a particular style. When professors do not dictate a particular style, they will usually simply expect you to use the author-year or number system with consistency throughout the paper.

Remember, too, that journals within you field have already made informed decisions about which in-text citation practices they use. To settle on citation particulars, many writers model a journal in their field—mandatory, of course, if you submit material to a journal hoping for publication.

Read up on the specifics of various citation styles, in particular MLA and APA, at the following pages:

"Research and Citation Resources" article from Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL)

"Citation Style for Research Papers" article from Long Island University

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Citation Styles

Citation styles with numbers in brackets [Updated 2023]

Top citation styles with numbers in brackets

Citation styles can take many forms, such as author-date, author-page, footnotes, numeric, etc. In this post, we discuss the most common citation styles with numbers in brackets. We cover IEEE, ACM, and others, and provide examples of references in each style.

#1 Vancouver

Vancouver is the number one citation style with numbers in brackets

Vancouver style is a numeric citation system used in biomedical, health and other sciences . This style consists of in-text citations that use either superscript or bracketed numbers.

The same number is used throughout the paper to refer to the same source. The reference list at the end of the paper lists the full bibliographic citations for each source. This list is ordered sequentially, not alphabetically.

Vancouver style resources

🌐 Official Vancouver style guidelines

📝 Vancouver citation generator

🗂 Estilo Vancouver (in Spanish)

Vancouver style examples

Here is an example of an in-text citation in Vancouver style:

A similar study was carried out in 2015 (1) .

Here is a reference list entry in Vancouver style:

1. Aprile A, Gulino A, Storto M, Villa I, Beretta S, Merelli I, et al. Hematopoietic stem cell function in β-thalassemia is impaired and is rescued by targeting the bone marrow niche. Blood [Internet]. 2020; Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.2019002721

IEEE is the number two citation style with numbers in brackets

IEEE style is used for engineering and science papers. This style uses a numeric, in-text citation format, with a number in square brackets. This number corresponds to a reference list entry at the end of the paper.

IEEE style resources

🌐 Official IEEE style guidelines

🗂 IEEE style guide

📝 IEEE citation generator

IEEE style examples

Here is an in-text citation in IEEE style:

As seen in a multi-camera study [1] ...

Here is a bibliography entry in IEEE style:

[1] E. Nuger and B. Benhabib, “Multi-Camera Active-Vision for Markerless Shape Recovery of Unknown Deforming Objects,” J. Intell. Rob. Syst. , vol. 92, no. 2, pp. 223–264, Oct. 2018.

ACM is the number three citation style with numbers in brackets

The Association for Computing Machinery has its own numeric style. This style requires the use of sequential numbers in square brackets for in-text citations, which are then added to a reference list at the end of the paper.

ACM style resources

🌐 Official ACM style guidelines

🗂 ACM style guide

ACM style examples

Here is an example of an in-text citation in ACM style:

...as seen in a computer-generated holograms for 3D imaging survey [1] .

Here is a bibliography entry in ACM style:

[1] Erdem Sahin, Elena Stoykova, Jani Mäkinen, and Atanas Gotchev. 2020. Computer-generated holograms for 3D imaging: A survey. ACM Comput. Surv . 53, 2 (2020), 1–35.

#4 Physical Review Letters

Physical Review Letters is the number four citation style with numbers in brackets

The Physical Review Letters (PRL) style allows both in-text references and footnotes. Each reference must be numbered consecutively in square brackets and added to a list at the end of the paper. The list contains full bibliographic information for each source.

PRL style resources

🌐 Official PRL style guidelines

🗂 PRL style guide

PRL style examples

Here is an in-text citation in PRL style:

Recent studies [1] ...

Here is a bibliography entry in PRL style:

[1] P. Gomez, F. Martin, C. Mazzinghi, D. Benedicto Orenes, S. Palacios, and M. W. Mitchell, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124 , (2020).

#5 Elsevier

Elsevier is the number five citation style with numbers in brackets

Elsevier journals use many different types of citation styles, but they also have their own numeric style. This style, referred as the Standard numbered style, requires in-text references with numbers in square brackets. These numbers are then added to a reference list in the order in which they appear in the text.

Elsevier style resources

🌐 Official Elsevier style guidelines

Elsevier style examples

Here is an in-text citation in Elsevier style:

Similarly, the climate response to ultraviolet irradiation was tested [1] .

Here is a bibliography entry in Elsevier style:

[1] Z.-N. Xiao, S. Dong, Q. Zhong, Numerical simulation of climate response to ultraviolet irradiation forcing, Adv. Clim. Chang. Res. 10 (2019) 133–142.

Frequently Asked Questions about citation styles with numbers in brackets

The most popular citation style with numbers in brackets is Vancouver style. The same number is used throughout the paper to refer to the same source. The reference list at the end of the paper lists the full bibliographic citations for each source. This list is ordered sequentially, not alphabetically.

No. Citation styles that use bracketed numbers typically do not require to numbers to be italicized.

Using round or square brackets will depend on the citation style you choose. Follow the requirements of the specific style that you’re using.

Some of the most well-known databases and journals that use citation styles with numbers in brackets are: Elsevier , Physical Review Letters , and PubMed .

You can easily create an error-free reference list with the BibGuru citation generator . This fast, free, and ad-free generator creates accurate citations for 70 sources types in every major style. Students have called BibGuru “easy to use,” “Inviting,” and “friendly.”

Make your life easier with our productivity and writing resources.

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IMAGES

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IEEE
APA Citations for a Thesis or Dissertation
Easy to Use APA Citation Generator & APA Format Guide
10 Easy Steps: How to Cite Article in Paragraph
Everything You Need to Know About MLA Format and Citations

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How to Add References Using EndNote
Cite References Automatically in your Research Paper

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Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of
Among the most frequently used citation indicators are the field-normalized citation impact indicator, the number/proportion of highly cited papers, and the h-index. The first indicator is an expression of the average number of citations of the publications, normalized for field, publication year, and document type (e.g., regular article or ...
How many citations does it take to indicate an academic article is
Newcastle University. The time-frame is important - another metric might be citations per year. For me 12 citations for an article published in 2013 would indicate a level of interest in a short ...
How many citations are actually a lot of citations?
If you have even 1 citations for a manuscript you are already (almost!) in the top half (top 55.8%). With 10 or more citations, your work is now in the top 24% of the most cited work worldwide; this increased to the top 1.8% as you reach 100 or more citations. Main take home message: the average citation per manuscript is clearly below 10!
Citation Analysis
The index is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have at most h citations each. Find your h-index at: Web of Science
Format Your Paper & Cite Your Sources
Placement: The reference list appears at the end of the paper, on its own page(s). If your research paper ends on page 8, your References begin on page 9. Heading: Place the section label References in bold at the top of the page, centered. Arrangement: Alphabetize entries by author's last name. If source has no named author, alphabetize by the ...
Significance and implications of accurate and proper citations in
Citations are an essential component of clinical research studies. In health sciences most articles will refer to over 20 other peer-reviewed publications [ 1 ]. Citations are a core part of the entire research process. Citations fuel literature reviews [ 2, 3] and they allow researchers to link their experiments to previous results and ...
In-Text Citations: The Basics
When using APA format, follow the author-date method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, like, for example, (Jones, 1998). One complete reference for each source should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.
Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive ...
The majority of academic papers are scarcely cited while a few others are highly cited. A large number of studies indicate that there are many factors influencing the number of citations. An actual review is missing that provides a comprehensive review of the factors predicting the frequency of citations. In this review, we performed a search in WoS, Scopus, PubMed and Medline to retrieve ...
Evaluating the impact of citations of articles based on knowledge flow
For publications with the same years and fields, the number of citations is considered to indicate the impact of the articles on the advancement of the fields. To measure the impact of a scientist, a college, and a research institute, the metrics of the h-index [14-23], the g-index [24, 25], and the R-index , respectively, have been used ...
Citations are a good way to determine the quality of research
A proper Introduction to a paper puts the present research into context in terms of recent progress in the topic and gaps in the knowledge that need to be filled, and likewise a good Discussion puts the results of the research into context. ... lack of citations does not mean a piece of work is necessarily of lower quality. The number of ...
Measures of Impact for Journals, Articles, and Authors
Disciplines vary widely in the amount of research output, the number of citations that are normally included in papers, and the tendency of a discipline to cite recent articles. 6 For example, Acta Poetica focuses on literary criticism. Its impact factor would be a poor measure of the journal's influence.
How to Cite Sources
Example: Parenthetical citation (APA) Evolution is a gradual process that "can act only by very short and slow steps" (Darwin, 1859, p. 510). An alternative to this type of in-text citation is the system used in numerical citation styles, where a number is inserted into the text, corresponding to an entry in a numbered reference list.
MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
h-index
The h-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The h-index correlates with success indicators such as winning the Nobel Prize, being accepted for research fellowships and holding positions at top universities. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited ...
The Basics of In-Text Citation
In-text citations most commonly take the form of short parenthetical statements indicating the author and publication year of the source, as well as the page number if relevant. Example: APA Style in-text citation (Jackson, 2005, p. 16) We also offer a free citation generator and in-depth guides to the main citation styles.
How to Determine the number of citations for an article
Keep in mind the number of citations of each of these databases will be different because of the way they pull the citation information. ... If the number is greater than 0 then you can click on it and it will give you the papers that cited the one you had searched. Find Number of Citations on Web of Science.
13.1 Formatting a Research Paper
Set the top, bottom, and side margins of your paper at 1 inch. Use double-spaced text throughout your paper. Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, in a legible size (10- to 12-point). Use continuous pagination throughout the paper, including the title page and the references section.
Number System: In-Text Citation
When you use the number system, your responsibility is to indicate in your text—either in parentheses or brackets—a number that corresponds to a source on your references page. The first source you cite in your text receives the number 1, the second number 2, and so on. If you repeat a reference to a source later in the text, it retains its ...
When and How to Include Page Numbers in APA Style Citations
In the 6th edition of the APA Publication Manual, page 171 it provides a written long quote over 40 words. In the explanation it tell us to cite the quoted source and the page or para number. In the first example it gives us a (p. ) or (para. ). In several long quote examples I have always seen (p. 1-2).
How To Cite a Research Paper in 2024: Citation Styles Guide
There are two main kinds of titles. Firstly, titles can be the name of the standalone work like books and research papers. In this case, the title of the work should appear in the title element of the reference. Secondly, they can be a part of a bigger work, such as edited chapters, podcast episodes, and even songs.
publications
If a paper has an obvious flaw, this may give rise to a number of other papers that just cite the flawed paper to point out what they are about to prove wrong or do better. Citation scope: Referencing a paper does not mean referencing the whole paper, or its core finding. A reference to a paper might mean that the whole paper is pointed out as ...
Citation styles with numbers [Updated 2023]
Vancouver style is a numeric citation system used in biomedical, health and other sciences. This style consists of in-text citations that use either superscript or bracketed numbers. The same number is used throughout the paper to refer to the same source. The reference list at the end of the paper lists the full bibliographic citations for ...
Citation styles with numbers in brackets [Updated 2023]
Vancouver style is a numeric citation system used in biomedical, health and other sciences. This style consists of in-text citations that use either superscript or bracketed numbers. The same number is used throughout the paper to refer to the same source. The reference list at the end of the paper lists the full bibliographic citations for ...

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How many citations are actually a lot of citations?

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Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis

Citation Analysis

About Citation Analysis

Citation Analysis - Why use it?

About the H-index

Format Your Paper & Cite Your Sources

APA Tutorial

Reference Examples (Chapter 10)

NoodleTools

What is APA Style?

APA style was created by social and behavioral scientists to standardize scientific writing. APA style is most often used in:

APA Style, 7th ed.

Paper Elements

Sample Papers With Built-In Instructions

Use Word to Format Your Paper:

Use Google Docs to Format Your Paper:

See Sample References Page (from APA Sample Student Paper):

Elements of Reference List Entries: (Chapter 9)

Formatting Your In-Text Citations

Parenthetical Citations

Narrative Citations

In-Text Citation Checklist

In-Text Citations for Specific Types of Sources

Use NoodleTools to Cite Your Sources

See How to Use NoodleTools Express to Create a Citation in APA Format

Additional NoodleTools Help

Citations are a good way to determine the quality of research

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Introduction and overview: Clive Baldock, moderator

Opening statement—Martin Caon

Opening Statement—Jamie Trapp

Rebuttal—Martin Caon

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Measures of Impact for Journals, Articles, and Authors

Jeffrey L. Jackson

Individual Authors

ORCID ( www.orcid.org )

ResearcherID ( www.researcherid.com )

Scopus and Web of Science

Measures of Impact for Authors

Measures of Impact for Individual Articles

Alternative measures of influence

PlumX Analytics

Measures of Impact for Journals

Journal Citation Reports

Google Scholar

Journal Altmetrics

Declarations

MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

Basic in-text citation rules

In-text citations: Author-page style

In-text citations for print sources with known author

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

Citing authors with same last names

Citing a work by multiple authors

Citing multiple works by the same author

Citing multivolume works

Citing the Bible

Citing indirect sources

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Electronic sources