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<p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b>Citation analysis</b>&nbsp;is the examination of the frequency, patterns, and graphs of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Citation">citations</a>&nbsp;in documents. It uses the&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_graph" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Directed graph">directed graph</a>&nbsp;of citations &mdash; links from one document to another document &mdash; to reveal properties of the documents. A typical aim would be to identify the most important documents in a collection. A classic example is that of the citations between academic&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(publishing)" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Article (publishing)">articles</a>&nbsp;and books.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[1]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[2]</a></sup>&nbsp;For another example, judges of law support their&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_(law)" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Judgment (law)">judgements</a>&nbsp;by referring back to judgements made in earlier cases (see&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#Citation_analysis_for_legal_documents" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">citation analysis in a legal context</a>). An additional example is provided by patents which contain&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Prior art">prior art</a>, citation of earlier patents relevant to the current claim.</p>

<p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Documents can be associated with many other features in addition to citations, such as authors, publishers, journals as well as their actual texts. The general analysis of collections of documents is known as&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliometrics" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Bibliometrics">bibliometrics</a>&nbsp;and citation analysis is a key part of that field. For example,&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliographic_coupling" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Bibliographic coupling">bibliographic coupling and co-citation</a>&nbsp;are association measures based on citation analysis (shared citations or shared references). The citations in a collection of documents can also be represented in forms such as a&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_graph" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Citation graph">citation graph</a>, as pointed out by&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_J._de_Solla_Price" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Derek J. de Solla Price">Derek J. de Solla Price</a>&nbsp;in his 1965 article &quot;Networks of Scientific Papers&quot;.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Price65_3-0" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-Price65-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[3]</a></sup>&nbsp;This means that citation analysis draws on aspects of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Social network analysis">social network analysis</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_science" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Network science">network science</a>.</p>

<p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">An early example of automated citation indexing was&nbsp;<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CiteSeer" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="CiteSeer">CiteSeer</a>, which was used for citations between academic papers, while&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_Science" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Web of Science">Web of Science</a>&nbsp;is an example of a modern system which includes more than just academic books and articles reflecting a wider range of information sources. Today, automated&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_index" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Citation index">citation indexing</a><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[4]</a></sup>&nbsp;has changed the nature of citation analysis research, allowing millions of citations to be analyzed for&nbsp;<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data_analytics" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Big data analytics">large-scale patterns</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_discovery" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Knowledge discovery">knowledge discovery</a>. Citation analysis tools can be used to compute various impact measures for scholars based on data from&nbsp;<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_indices" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Citation indices">citation indices</a>.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[5]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-6" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[6]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[7]</a></sup>&nbsp;These have various applications, from the identification of expert referees to review papers and grant proposals, to providing transparent data in support of academic merit review,&nbsp;<a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;" title="Tenure">tenure</a>, and promotion decisions. This competition for limited resources may lead to ethically questionable behavior to increase citations.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[8]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[9]</a></sup></p>

<p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">A great deal of criticism has been made of the practice of naively using citation analyses to compare the impact of different scholarly articles without taking into account other factors which may affect citation patterns.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[10]</a></sup>&nbsp;Among these criticisms, a recurrent one focuses on &ldquo;field-dependent factors&rdquo;, which refers to the fact that citation practices vary from one area of science to another, and even between fields of research within a discipline.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[11]</a></sup></span></p>

<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">S</a>ource</strong></span><span style="font-size: 11.2px; white-space: nowrap;">:&nbsp;</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis" style="font-size: 14px;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis</a></div>
