Selected Tools for Evaluating Scholarly Credentials in History
Journal Impact
Citation Analysis
Book Impact
This toolkit is designed to assist the historian quantitatively evaluate his or her academic productivity. Even in history, the all-important scholarly monograph does not necessarily tell the whole story. Peer-reviewed journal articles and papers presented at conferences might hold some weight, particularly for newer scholars. Beyond the question of tenure, a scholar might simply wish to assess the impact of his or her work on the field. I am available for individual meetings or group presentations in order facilitate the use of these resources. If you would like to schedule a meeting or training session, or if you just have questions or comments, please call or send me an email.
Ulrich’s (International) Periodicals Directory
This database provides comprehensive information about hundreds of thousands of journals, including both active and ceased titles. Browse all 1,937 journals listed under "History." Make your browse easier by limiting that group to a particular place of publication, journal subtopic, etc. Alternately, search for a journal by title keyword(s) or, if you know it, by the ISSN. Each journal record includes the following information:
- Current ISSN number (unique journal number; necessary for a "clean" search in WorldCat)
- Circulation figures (an indicator of quantity)
- "Academic/Scholarly" designation (an indicator of quality)
- Refereed status (an indicator of quality)
- Description of content / topics covered
- Abstracting and indexing services that cover the journal (an indicator of quality; an indicator of
accessibility: the more services there are indexing a journal, the more researchers are led to it)
- Indication of inclusion in ISI's Journal Citation Reports (JCR) (an indicator of quality; an indicator that the
journal is cited)
- Reviews (can indicate uniqueness, relevance, to field)
Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
This database provides statistical data about the relative importance of over 1,700 social sciences journals across various disciplines, including history. The higher a journal's
impact factor the more central it is to scholarly debates and internal discussions in the discipline. JCR rates journals by compiling citation data from Web of Science. It is available for only two of the three Web of Science databases: the
Science Citation Index and the
Social Sciences Citation Index. It is NOT available for the
Arts & Humanities Citation Index. There is no corresponding JCR-type tool for the arts and humanities.
(See
Citation Analysis, below, for more about Web of Science's three citation databases.) Because debate exists on whether history is a social science or humanity, JCR cannot be relied upon to provide data for many legitimate history (i.e. humanities) journals. Currently, sixteen journals are identified by JCR as having the highest impact factors in history:
Environmental History,
American Historical Review,
Journal of American History,
Journal of Modern History,
Social Science History,
Past & Present,
Journal of African History,
Comparative Studies in Society & History,
Journal of Social History,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History,
History Workshop Journal,
International Review of Social History,
Ethnohistory,
Journal of the History of Sexuality,
Zeitgeschichte, and
Mouvement Social.
- Click on the purplish "JCR Web" icon within an Ulrich's journal entry in order to be connected directly to the corresponding JCR Report; OR
- Enter JCR directly from the link above or the A-Z databases list on the Libraries' Homepage.
- Select JCR "Social Sciences Edition".
- Select "Search for a specific journal"; Search by title or ISSN and then click "Submit". (Alternately, select "View a group of journals by Subject Category"; click "Submit," then choose one of the following subject categories: History, History & Philosophy of Science, or History of Social Sciences. Use the drop down menu to sort your chosen grouping by title, total cites, impact factor, etc.; click "Submit".)
- Click on the journal title for the full description and all rankings, with definitions.
- Note the subject(s) assigned to the journal in order to compare with other journals in the same subject category.
Worldcat
WorldCat is a
union catalog that contains tens of millions of records from member libraries.
In addition to journals, the database includes books, computer files, websites, manuscripts and other archival material, maps, musical scores, video tapes, and more.
This database gives the truest indication of the total number of libraries that subscribe to a journal.
Searching:
- Use the ISSN number for the journal (this returns results for the current title of the journal; a title search could
return potentially dozens of records for the same journal, reflecting all of its name changes over time). If you don't know the ISSN number, use Ulrich's (above) to obtain it. Even a precise ISSN search may turn up more than one record for a particular journal title. Remember that thousands of libraries contribute records to WorldCat. Often these libraries have chosen to catalog a single source slightly differently, resulting in one, two, or more records for the same item.
- Choose the "Advanced" search option, located in the upper left section of the screen.
- In the options labeled "Limit type to", click on "Serial Publications" (this eliminates results that include books
compiled from the journal's articles).
- Enter the ISSN number in the first blank line labeled "Search for".
- In the search type field (displaying "Keyword"), click on the down arrow and choose "Standard Number" as the search type.
- Click on the "Search" button.
- More than one record may display (again, this reflects the different cataloging information that libraries provide to the database). Count the number of "Libraries Worldwide".
Print Results:
- Note the record(s) that truly reflect(s) the journal title under consideration.
- The results are ranked by the number of libraries that own the journal.
- For each record, choose "Libraries Worldwide" to get a list of local libraries. Next choose "Display All Libraries" for full the list. Now "Print".
Note: The old
RLG Union Catalog was the major catalog of the holdings of the largest and most prestigious research and
academic libraries worldwide. Many RLG libraries add their information to WorldCat, but not all do so. The RLG Union Catalog was therefore an excellent indicator of a journal's quality and prestige. Unfortunately, the RLG Union Catalog is now defunct, its records having been rolled into WorldCat.
JAKE (Jointly Administered Knowledge Environment) and/or
CUFTS
The free JAKE database identifies journals indexed in nearly 200 electronic databases; CUFTS, also free, identifies 422,000 journals in over 350 databases (
an indicator of quality;
an indicator of accessibility; the more services there are indexing a journal, the more researchers are led to it).
- Of the two, CUFTS seems better maintained of late. Click on "Tools" from the left-hand column in CUFTS, then choose "Journal Search".
- Search by ISSN or title. The total number of databases that index the title is provided in a results list.
Web of Science / Web of Knowledge Citation Indexes (Institute for Scientific Information)
Use this database to perform citation analysis on
articles written by historians. In other words, find out who is citing whom, when, and where.
Start with a list of the author's publications, preferably from a CV or bibliography. DO NOT begin your search hoping to identity a list of the author's works or even a specific work, as this is often difficult and unreliable; better tools than Web of Science exist for identifying an author's corpus (see Historical Abstracts and America: History & Life, directly below). Web of Science is particular about the way in which an author's name must be entered into the database. It is therefore recommended to search the author's last name (e.g.
CLANCY)
in combination with a second search facet (e.g. cited year of publication). There are three citation indexes in Web of Science, all of which are turned on by default:
Science Citation Index (SCI),
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and
Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). Each indexes journals in its respect broad area of knowledge. Even if the author under consideration is not a "scientist" but a "social scientist" or "humanist," stick with the default search for the most comprehensive results.
- Click on the "Cited Ref Search" icon to begin the process of identifying articles that cite an author's work(s).
- Enter the author's name in the Cited Author field like this: last name only; OR last-name space first-initial followed immediately by an asterisk (*). Example: SANTLEY or SANTLEY R* (case is now irrelevant, but the old-style capitalization is maintained for the purpose of this example). The latter picks up works authored by "Robert Santley" and "Robert S. Santley". As indicated above, it is best to add cited year, if known, in the appropriate search box before performing the search.
- Press "Search" to retrieve your "CITED REFERENCE INDEX" results list. WARNING: Even good searches usually return results with at least a few "false hits" (synonymous authors and titles). You will need to weed these out. This is one reason why, as a general rule, it is less confusing to search for a single article than multiple works, and to combine the search with a cited year if known. Check the boxes next to the results you feel actually represent the article under consideration.
- Finally, click the "Finish Search" icon to obtain a list of references to articles that cite the article under consideration. It is possible to sort the final results list by number of times cited, publication year, first author, etc. Clicking on a reference reveals a link to all the references it cites (it's bibliography or works cited list), and other bibliographic information. Print, email, or export to RefWorks your final results list from the right-hand column under "Output Records".
- You might wish to return to the Scholarly Credentials Toolkit for additional tips and a longer tutorial on citation analysis.
Historical Abstracts and
America: History & Life (or search
both at once without access to cited references)
The core history databases are now available on the familiar EBSCOhost platform. A new cited reference search has been added to both databases. The combined information indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History & Life is so comprehensive with regard to history scholarship that even a simple author-name search, where no cited reference search is involved, can broadly determine quantity (and to a lesser extent quality) of scholarly output. The databases can be used to confirm partial or suspect article citations and/or create a fairly comprehensive bibliography of works produced by an author.
- Choose "Cited References" from the green bar at the top of the homepage of either database. No cited reference option appears if both databases are searched simultaneously. Enter any combination of cited author, cited source, cited title, cited year, or all fields and then hit the "Search" button. The results are displayed below the Cited References sub-tab. The Search fields remain available so you can edit your search terms or run a new search. From the Cited References sub-tab, you can mark check boxes, click Find Citing Articles, and retrieve a list of Citing Articles.
- Regular keyword searches can result in lists of records with "Cited References (X)" and "Times Cited in this Database (X)" in the citation. Clicking on a Cited References hyperlink causes the Cited References sub-tab to present a list of records cited in your original article (in other words, just a bibliography of works quoted or consulted by the author of the original article). If you click the Times Cited in this Database hyperlink, the Citing Articles sub-tab presents a list of records that cite your original article (in other words, a list of articles that subsequently cited the original article).
Note: Academic Search Premier, available on the Ebsco platform, offers a cited reference search. Since ASP is the Libraries' most comprehensive serials database, it is well worth including in any comprehensive search for cited references. As above, choose "Cited References" from the green bar at the top of ASP's homepage.
JSTOR
JSTOR, the premier scholarly journal database, offers a cited reference search. However, this ability is not available from the initial basic or advanced search screens.
- Begin by performing a standard search for the article under consideration. If found, click on the article title to reveal the article's initial, full-text page.
- A box titled "JSTOR" appears to the right of the article. It may indicate "X articles Cite this Article." Click on this link to reveal citations to articles in JSTOR that cite the article under consideration. Note as well the presence of a link to "Articles Citing This Article" in Google Scholar, more about which below.
- Unfortunately, JSTOR's standard cited reference search sometimes misses relevant results. If the article title is sufficiently unique, it is possible to perform a more comprehensive, and time consuming, manual cited reference search using JSTOR's proximity operator — "keyword1 keyword2"~#WordsBetween. Example: A researcher wishes to discover how many JSTOR articles cite "Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter" by J. Brian Harley, in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 522-536. According to JSTOR's standard cited reference search, five articles cite Harley's work. However, a basic keyword search for "rereading columbian"~5 returns 21 hits, including the following article not in the original count of five: "Columbus and Anthropology and the Unknown," by Robert Paine, in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Mar., 1995), pp. 47-65. Paine's article cites Harley's earlier article in its bibliography on page 64 (click on "Page of First Match" within the Paine article citation to see this).
- The problem described above, namely the failure of a formal cited reference search to find all relevant articles, points out a basic rule of citation searching: No citation search, no matter how comprehensive, can ever be considered truly complete. It is always possible that an important, relevant references will be missed by the databases discussed in this guide.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar offers a cited reference search. Look for "Cited by X" if the Google Scholar results list. If you are already looking at the first page of an article in JSTOR, simply click on "Articles Citing This Article" in Google Scholar.
Note: The sources listed in this section invariably provide duplicate references. One way to easily de-duplicate your citation analysis results is to import them directly into a folder in RefWorks, an online tool acquired by the Libraries to help researchers manage and organize their citations.
- Libraries that own the book:
Use WorldCat to compile a list of libraries that own the book under consideration. WorldCat gives the truest indication of the total number of libraries that own a book.
- Search by author, title, or ISBN (unique book number)
- List of owning libraries can be printed out and compared
- Book review sources in History — Temple University Libraries subscription databases, two free databases, and one print index:
Bold indicates source contains reviews from scholarly journals only, or a mix of reviews from scholarly and general-interest periodicals.
Databases marked with an asterisk (*) can be searched simultaneously on the EBSCOhost platform. Click on the down arrow within the "In:" drop-down box. Check off as many databases as desired (up to 3 book review sources on this platform), then click the "Submit" button.
Databases marked with (†) can be searched simultaneously on the Wilson platform. Click on "Open Database Selection Area," and then check off the boxes next to the desired databases. You can also check the box next to "Peer Reviewed" in the "Limit to:" section if desired, but make sure the checkbox next to "Reader's Guide Full Text" is checked in order to be able to see/choose this option.
