Bibliometrics and Impact Factor: Citation Reports

Citation reports give an analysis of citation data. Example of a citation report from Web of Science:

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Citation reports give an analysis of citation data. Reports are a way of making information practical.

"Scientific literature is characterized by two distinct citation half-lives of articles: classic articles with persistently high citations and transient ones with their citations peaked within a short period of time (Price, 1965). Transient ones are much more common than classics (Van Raan, 2000). The average length of time that a research article continues to be cited in the scientific literature is closely connected to the growth speed of  the underlying research area (Abt, 1998). Understanding the dynamics of how transient articles transform the intellectual landscape of a scientific field has significant practical implications for scientists in a wide variety of disciplines" (Chen, 2006).

Elements included in measuring the impact of an article:

• Total number of pages
• Total number of citations
• Citations per paper
• Number of significant papers
• Number of citations to each of the most-cited papers