What is citation indexing?
Here is a description from Eugene Garfield, developer of citation indexing: The concept of citation indexing is simple. Almost all the papers, notes, reviews, corrections, and correspondence published in scientific journals contain citations. These cite–generally by title, author, and where and when published–documents that support, provide precedent for, illustrate, or elaborate on what the author has to say. Citations are the formal, explicit linkage between papers that have particular points in common. A citation index is built around these linkages [italics added]. It lists publications that have been cited and identifies the sources of the citations. Anyone conducting a literature search can find from one to dozens of additional papers on a subject just by knowing one that has been cited. And every paper that is found provides a list of new citations with which to continue the search. Citation indexing–its theory and application in science, technology, and humanities. (book by
