LibGuides: Research Impact Metrics: Books and Book Chapters

About This Guide
Questions You May Have
Impact and Metrics
Bibliometrics and Altmetrics
Output-Level Metrics (Articles, Books, Data, etc.)
Author-Level Metrics
Journal-Level Metrics
Department-Level Metrics
Tracking & Collecting Metrics
Using Metrics Strategically Toggle Dropdown
- Metrics Use Cases
Boosting Your Metrics

Considerations
Web of Science
Google Scholar
WOS vs Google Scholar
Altmetric
Dimensions
Book Reviews
Other Sources (Including Qualitative)

This section covers the resources for metrics and other information (including qualitative) to help you identify use and/or engagement with your book or book chapter.

Which of these resources will be most useful, and what data you will find, will depend greatly on what you wrote. Here are some of the factors to consider:

Is the work non-fiction, or fiction?
Did you author or co-author the entire work, did you contribute a chapter or section in an edited work, or did you edit the work yourself?
If it is an edited work, what did you contribute?: For example:
- Is it a short story or poem for an anthology?
- Is it a chapter for a non-fiction work? Does it have a unique title, like The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires, or not, like Annual Review of Economics, volume 9?
- Did you edit the work?
What discipline: science/engineering, social sciences, arts/humanities?
How is your book or chapter being used? Is it being cited in journal articles or other books/chapters? Could faculty be including your work in their course syllabi?
How is the work available: print only, online online, or both?

What Book and Chapter-Level Metrics Can I Get Out of Web of Science?

With each book and chapter indexed in Web of Science, you can get a Times Cited count, the number of times cited by other works indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, From Times Cited, you can retrieve that list of citing works. If you start with a book, go to "See more data fields" to get a link to view the chapters. From the record for a book chapter, the book title is listed under the chapter title.

The Web of Science Core Collection indexes

More than 94,000 books, through the Book Citation Index.
14,000 journals selected for inclusion in the three main citation indexes: 9,000 (Science Citation Index), 3,300 Social Science Citation Index, and 1,800 in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index.
7,300 journals from the Emerging Sources Citation Index
197,000 conference proceedings, from the Conference Proceedings Citation Index.

How Do I Access Web of Science?

Go to https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/basic-search to access Web of Science. UC San Diego faculty, staff and students must be on the campus network, the protected WiFi network, or VPN to access.

What Else Should I Know About Web of Science for Book/Chapter Metrics?

Book chapter records are linked to their corresponding book record (and vice versa), but books and chapters can have their own Times Cited counts, depending on how the work was cited (book or chapter).
- If you authored one chapter in an edited book, then you'll focus on the Times Cited count for that chapter. While the book may have its own citation count, the citing works did not specify which chapter was cited.
- If you authored the entire work, you will want to focus on the citations counts for the book and (if indexed separately in Web of Science) the individual chapters. Assuming the citing works for the chapters are not duplicated in the citing references for the book, you can combine these counts.
- If you edited the work then you may want to look at the Times Cited counts for the book and chapters for the same reason.
The Times Cited for the Book Citation Index doesn't go as far back in terms of indexing monographs, though it does go further back for series (like the "Annual Review in...", "Methods in....", or "Advances in....").
There are no author address listings for book author records, though there are for book chapter records.

What Else Can I Do in Web of Science?

Analyze:

You can analyze any set of citing works to find out more about who cited your work. From Analyze Results, generate treemaps, bar graphs, and text-delimited files. The treemap/bar graph visualization allows for up to 25 results, and the text-delimited file allows for up to 500 results.

Document Types - How many times was your book/chapter cited in other articles, reviews, proceedings, books, or book chapters?
Authors / Organizations / Countries - Which authors cited your book/chapter, where are they affiliated, or what country are they from? This information might be useful if you are asked about the global reach of your work.
- Training: Discover Trends Using Analyze Results

Alerts/Lists:

With a Web of Science account, you can create citation alerts to be notified when a book/chapter has been cited (one alert per work), or save results as Marked Lists to analyze again at a later date.
- Training: Using the Marked List, and Saving Marked Lists

Other Metrics: Web of Science provides some additional, time-sensitive metrics.

Usage Counts - The number of times that users interacted with the Web of Science record beyond viewing the abstract, including linking out to the full text article or saving the reference to EndNote or another reference manager.
- Training: Web of Science Usage Counts
Highly Cited in Field, denoted with a - For the time period identified, the book chapter was cited enough to place it in the top 1% of works for its given field and publication year. This data comes from Essential Science Indicators, which uses 22 broad subject fields (including "social sciences"). This will come up primarily with chapters in the Annual Review series.

Cited Reference Searching

The Cited Ref Searching can identify citing works that haven't been included in the actual Times Cited count. See the Web of Science Cited Ref Searching tab under Article-Level Metrics for more information about Cited Reference Variants..

What Book and Chapter-Level Metrics Can I Get Out of Google Scholar?

Google Scholar will give you a Times Cited count, the number of times the work was cited by other sources found in Google Scholar). The Times Cited count will come up in the regular search results, or when viewing an author's works list in a Google Scholar Profile if available.

Google Scholar includes:

Scholarly journals, conference proceedings, books, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, patents (which can be excluded) or searched separately), technical reports, and other scholarly publications. There's more coverage of sources that are not indexed in Web of Science (like dissertations), as well as non-US materials, new journals, and newly published articles.

What Else Should I Know About Google Scholar for Book/Chapter Citations?

Determining what exactly is in Google Scholar (and years covered) is sometimes a mystery.
Chapters in series like Annual Reviews should only show up in Google Scholar by the chapter. Non-edited works should show up once in Google Scholar, by the title. However, many edited monographs are searchable in Google Scholar by book title and the chapter titles, all with their own citation counts. While the times cited count for the book and chapter should not overlap, you may want to review the citing works for each to be certain As with Web of Science, if someone cited the book rather than a specific chapter, then Google Scholar will give credit to the book rather than the chapter..
Citation counts may include duplicate references, or references to sources you don't want to count for this situation, like course syllabi or promotional/news items about your works.
It can be difficult to disambiguate author search results unless the author has created a Google Scholar Profile.

What Else Can I Do in Google Scholar?

Google Scholar Profiles

Creating and building your own profile in Google Scholar is a way for you (and others) to easily view the Times Cited count for all of your works.

Analyze

Analysis features are extremely limited. You can get a breakdown of citing works by year, but only within the Profile view and not from the search results view. The citing works cannot be analyzed the way they can in Web of Science.

There is no bulk export option from the search results screen. You must add each references individually to My Library (the little star icon next to the reference), and then from My Library mark all references to export for BibTeX or EndNote.

Alerts

To get an alert when your books or chapters are cited, click the blue Follow icon from the Google Scholar Profile and select New Citations to This Author.
To set up a citation alert for a single work, use the Create Alert option that comes up when you view the list of citing work, either from the search results or Scholar Profile.

Why Am I Getting Different Citation Counts Between Web of Science and Google Scholar?

Why does Web of Science show that your book/chapter was cited X times, while Google Scholar shows it was cited Y times? These differences can be attributed to several key reasons, which you can see if you export the citing works from Web of Science and Google Scholar, then see what's left after you exclude the common works.

Google Scholar covers some types of sources that aren't indexed in Web of Science, like dissertations and theses, as well as some non-peer reviewed sources like syllabi and news. It also covers more books than Web of Science.
Google Scholar covers recently published journal articles that haven't yet been indexed in Web of Science, so citing articles that are unique to Google Scholar will appear in Web of Science in the future. In 2019, Clarivate will begin indexing these early articles for selected publishers, and aggregate the citations for both the early access versions and final published/indexed versions of the articles.
In Web of Science, the citation variants that appear in a Cited Reference Search and aren't included in the Times Cited counts, and on rare occasions the cited work is indexed but your citation was excluded (these can be reported and fixed). In Google Scholar, there may be duplicate citations to the same work, if that work is posted in multiple places and cannot be reconciled.

Which metrics should I use?

That depends. Some researchers opt for the higher of the two numbers (often the Google Scholar number), while some include both. Either way, you should include the source with the number, and select the correct numbers (times cited for a book vs. book chapter). It's also import to be aware of why these numbers differ, and what is and is not getting counted in each. However, if there are a significant number of citing works that are not showing up on both Web of Science and Google Scholar, you might want to consider merging the lists (while removing duplicates) for further analysis, and to identify a larger pool of significant citing works.

What Book and Chapter-Level Metrics Can I Get from Altmetric?

From Altmetric, you can get an "attention score," based on coverage outside of journal and book citations, including news, social media, patents, course syllabi, and Wikipedia. The score is usually provided as an embedded "donut" or badge, with a link back to Altmetric.com with more details about sources covering your work.

Some publishers will provide the score on the book or chapter's homepage, though you may have to look around for it. It's sometimes included under "Metrics" or a similar label. If you can't find the donut/badge, try the Atlmetric Bookmarklet. Make sure you disable any ad or other third-party tracking browser apps on the publisher website, as they will block you from seeing anything from Altmetric. However, we have noticed that this does not work on some publisher websites, so please contact us if you have trouble finding this information for your work.

What Else Can I Do in Altmetric?

Analyze:

You can access the Altmetric details page for the book/chapter by clicking the donut or badge to learn more about WHO is talking about your work. From here you can see what kind of attention your book/chapter has received: the news/media sources that covered it, who has tweeted or blogged about it, has it been cited in Wikipedia, etc. You may also get some context for the attention score, how it ranks among all works covered by Altmetric or among outputs similar in age.

Alerts:

On that details page, click "Alert me about new mentions" to get email notices when Altmetric captures new mentions about your output. These go out as daily digests, so you can set them up for multiple outputs without getting too many emails.

What Else Should I Know About Altmetric?

The book or chapter must have a unique identifier in order to be tracked. This includes DOIs and ISBNs.
When you go to Altmetric.com from the book or chapter website, you may get a more limited view of the attention data. Some publishers have partnered with Altmetric to provide the full view of data (particularly academic publishers), while others have not. We may be able to assist you with these to get the full data view.
Topics that tend to get more news coverage and social media sharing may get favored. For example: health sciences, climate change, social media and the internet.

What Book and Chapter-Level Metrics Can I Get Out of Dimensions?

Dimensions gives citation counts and Altmetric attention scores. From the book/chapter record, you can view all citing works that are also in the Dimensions database, or link out to the Altmetric.com details pages to find out more about the attention sources (news, social media, syllabi, etc.). Results can be filtered multiple ways, including document type for books and chapters.

Dimensions currently contains more than 250,000 books and 8 million chapters, along with millions of journal articles, conference proceedings, patents, and policy papers..

How Do I Access Dimensions?

Go to https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication to begin searching. It's free, but you get more functionality (including researcher filtering) if you access Dimensions on the campus network, protected wifi, or VPN. To login, enter your ucsd.edu email address and then login with your Active Directory credentials

What Else Can I Do With Dimensions?

Analyze:

You can analyze a set of search results or list of citing works by researcher, research organization, publication type, or funder. Use the filters in the left column to limit your results. If there are more than 10 options, you can use "More" to enter an additional researcher, etc.

Alerts/Lists:

While logged in, you can save searches as Favorites, or export results for Excel or for visualizations using VOSviewer. No option to create email alerts.

Other Metrics:

Recent Citations - the number of citations received in the last two years.
Field Citation Ratio - Calculated for all Dimensions publications at least 2 years old and published after 1999, the FCR indicates the relative citation performance of an article, when compared with similarly-aged articles in its subject area. A value higher than 1.0 shows a higher than average citation performance. Many books and chapters will not have an FCR.

What Else Should I Know About Dimensions?

Dimensions is still very new, which means they're still adding more content and features. It's not as strong for topic searching as Web of Science.
As Dimensions is new, you may want to review the citing works for the book and chapter to verify no overlapping references.
For author searching, start with the Researcher filter and begin entering the name to limit the results. If there is more than one name match, you may need to view the results for the correct author.

How can I find book reviews?

The library has multiple databases for locating book reviews in newspapers, scholarly journals, and popular magazines. The reviews may be full text within the database, or provide you a citation for the actual reviews. An expanded list of these, including the subject-specific databases, consult our reviews guide.

Book Review Databases and Interdisciplinary Databases That Include Book Reviews

Book Review Digest Plus contains more than 938,000 full text book reviews (fiction and non-fiction), plus another 2 million citations to published reviews. Coverage back to 1981.
Choice Reviews is a searchable database of 200,000 Choice reviews for academic books going back to 1988. Results can be filtered by recommendation (including essential and highly recommended), recommended for community colleges, or whether they were identified as "outstanding academic titles" for that year.
New York Review of Books
U.S Major Dailies - Full text coverage of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal, back to 1980. More newspaper databases, including Access World News and Nexis Uni, are also available.
JSTOR is a full-text database of 2,600 scholarly journals, mostly in the humanities and social sciences, with the most recent 3-5 years not included.
Academic Search Complete is a multidisciplinary database indexing about 12,000 scholarly journals and popular/trade magazines, with about 5,300 available full text.
Web of Science not only includes the Book Citation Index, but also indexes 18,000 scholarly journals.
Project Muse is another full-text scholarly journal collection in the humanities and social sciences, from 1995 to date, including coverage of current issues. For coverage from 2000 and earlier, try Periodicals Index Online.

Where else can I find information to indicate possible impact of my book?

There are other places where you may find information (including qualitative) to help you discuss the impact and influence of your books:

Publishers

Can your publisher provide sales data, as well as any rankings like bestseller lists?
Is the publisher particularly prestigious in your field?
If your book is available as an ebook on the publisher's website, you may be able to get information about downloads, as is often the case now with journal articles. For example:
- For Cambridge University Press ebooks, you can find a list of citing references which you can compare with what you find in Web of Science and Google Scholar, an Altmetric Attention Score, and data on PDF downloads and HTML views. (example)
- Springer Nature provides data for Springer, Palgrave Macmillan and Apress books and chapters. This includes downloads, citations, reviews, and Altmetric data. The metrics are displayed on the book's homepage on the publisher sites, as well as the book and chapter pages on SpringerLink. (example 1).
- However, this will not give you information about how your book/chapter is being used on third-party platforms, such as JSTOR and ebook aggregators like ProQuest's Ebook Library.

Amazon

From Amazon, you can get reviews, excerpts of reviews published elsewhere, and sales rankings for that categories where your work was placed. Another place for book reviews: Goodreads.

Library Holdings

Use Worldcat to see how many libraries own your book. This won't tell you how many times your book has been checked out, just the number of libraries that have it. There may be multiple records for print and online (including audio) versions of the work

Course Syllabi

Through the Open Syllabus Project, you can see how many course syllabi within their database have your work listed, though you cannot get anything beyond a total count. If you can get an Altmetric Attention Score details page for your book, you can get a breakdown by institution.
If you want to identify additional course syllabi where your book is mentioned, the best option is to search for your work in Google, along with the word syllabus and/or included site:.edu in the search to limit to American educational institutions. To search for academic institutions elsewhere, replace .edu with the country code: .ca, .uk., au., etc.

What other impact indicators should I consider?

Are there translations of your work? Were there multiple printings because it sold out?
Did you give any readings or signings?
Was your work nominated or awarded any prizes? Did it make any end-of-year reading lists?.

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