Citation analysis-the exploration of reference patterns in the scholarly and scientific
literature-has long been applied in a number of social sciences to study research impact
knowledge flows and knowledge networks. It has important information science applications as
well particularly in knowledge representation and in information retrieval. Recent years have
seen a burgeoning interest in citation analysis to help address research management or
information service issues such as university rankings research evaluation or knowledge
domain visualization. This renewed and growing interest stems from significant improvements in
the availability and accessibility of digital bibliographic data (both citation and full text)
and of relevant computer technologies. The former provides large amounts of data and the latter
the necessary tools for researchers to conduct new types of large-scale citation analysis even
without special access to special data collections. Exciting new developments are emerging this
way in many aspects of citation analysis. This book critically examines both theory and
practical techniques of citation network analysis and visualization one of the two main types
of citation analysis (the other being evaluative citation analysis). To set the context for its
main theme the book begins with a discussion of the foundations of citation analysis in
general including an overview of what can and what cannot be done with citation analysis
(Chapter 1). An in-depth examination of the generally accepted steps and procedures for
citation network analysis follows including the concepts and techniques that are associated
with each step (Chapter 2). Individual issues that are particularly important in citation
network analysis are then scrutinized namely: field delineation and data sources for citation
analysis (Chapter 3) disambiguation of names and references (Chapter 4) and visualization of
citation networks (Chapter 5). Sufficient technical detail is provided in each chapter so the
book can serve as a practical how-to guide to conducting citation network analysis and
visualization studies. While the discussion of most of the topics in this book applies to all
types of citation analysis the structure of the text and the details of procedures examples
and tools covered here are geared to citation network analysis rather than evaluative citation
analysis. This conscious choice was based on the authors' observation that compared to
evaluative citation analysis citation network analysis has not been covered nearly as well by
dedicated books despite the fact that it has not been subject to nearly as much severe
criticism and has been substantially enriched in recent years with new theory and techniques
from research areas such as network science social network analysis or information
visualization. Table of Contents: Acknowledgment Dedications Foundations of Citation
Analysis Conducting Citation Network Analysis: Steps Concepts Techniques and Tools Field
Delineation and Data Sources for Citation Analysis Disambiguation in Citation Network
Analysis Visualization of Citation Networks Appendix 3.3 Appendix 5.4.2 Bibliography
Author Biographies
