Publishing a research paper is no longer enough to build a name for oneself in academia. In academia, your reputation as a scientist is determined by the number and quality of articles you produce. However, it is also dependent on the number of citations.
Citations recognize the scientist who made the discovery and first published it. As a result, the number of scholars that cite your work in their publications can evaluate your academic execution. It demonstrates that other researchers can build on your discovery and that it has been beneficial to the research area. Academics’ competitiveness is boosted by reports, such as the Web of Science’s Highly Cited Researchers List.
Another key issue for researchers is citation ranking. The Highly Cited Researchers List is published by Web of Science. This citation database indexes all research content in order to build a powerful search engine for the world’s scientific findings. They can produce yearly reports that rate journals and writers. This renowned ranking honors the world’s finest researchers whose citation records in the Web of Science database rank in the top 1% of their field. Being named in the list of Highly Cited Researchers denotes that you are a prominent and accomplished researcher.
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned requirement has increased the number of citation manipulation. This is due to the fierce competition in the realm of research. Researchers strive to have their work published in the most prominent journals in order to increase their chances of receiving research funding. Finally, your citation rating reflects your academic success, and the more citations you have, the more successful your academic career will be. Let us investigate how to determine “highly cited” studies.
Consider Google Scholar citation for the beginning. Suppose you are a junior researcher and your university prefers Web of Science as a data source. However, you have a low number of citations in Web of Science but a sizable number of citations in Google Scholar. In similar situations, one could claim that Google Scholar citations are a more precise indicator of citation impact for junior scholars.
This is because citations of Masters and Doctoral theses, conference proceedings, and working papers are included in the Google Scholar. Most of the time, this will be reflected in the Web of Science citations. Google Scholar also includes books, book chapters, and a considerably broader selection of articles than Web of Science, particularly in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Even on Google Scholar, some papers do not obtain enough citations. This is especially true in the case of the Social Sciences and Humanities, where the publication procedure is often more time-consuming. This also necessitates numerous rounds of revisions and a longer turnaround time even for accepted publications.
If there are very few citations in Google Scholar but only one or two publications are highly cited, try to compare them to other studies in the same journal published in the same year. For example, in the case of a 2018 paper with very few Google Scholar citations, you will have a pretty decent case to make if the majority of the journal’s articles published in the same year have no citations yet.
As for the ISI database, you can search the Web of Knowledge database “Essential Science Indicators Baselines” for citations of papers in ISI-listed journals. However, it only covers a fraction of the overall journal world, particularly in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Eventually, supposing that you have got a couple of citations in either the web of Science or Google scholar, it might be a good idea to see who has cited your work and in which field. It would be noteworthy if many citations have occurred in the best journals in your field.
In case you have got very few citations, the quality of the journal that published your work is needed to be evaluated. However, this is often not very indicative, due to the fact that some papers in the best journals never get cited. Generally, papers in the best journal get cited more than papers in lower-ranked ones. That’s why they have higher Journal Impact Factors. Accordingly, in case your work has been published in high-impact journals, the chance is that your work will be highly cited.