CITATION ANALYSIS

Citation analysis for the purposes of this survey is taken to mean the analysis of the citations or references which form part of the scholarly apparatus of primary communication. It is not taken to include study of the references appearing in secondary (abstracting or indexing) services, in subject bibliographies, or in lists or catalogues of the holdings or issues of libraries, although analysis of these latter sources of data can sometimes provide similar information to that derived from citations in the primary literature. The essence of the distinction is that citation in the primary literature expressly states a connection between two documents, one which cites and the other which is cited, whereas citation in other listings does not usually imply any connection between documents other than that effected by the indexing machinery. If libraries kept records of the materials requested, borrowed, or read by their individual users, and if these records could be synthesised so as to produce complete borrowing or reading lists for individuals (taking account, that is, of document acquisition by individuals from a number of sources), then the resultant data could be used for analytical purposes in the same way as citation data from primary publication and with much the same justification.