Subject and Research Guides: Research Impact Metrics: Book Metrics

Why use book & chapter citation metrics?

In a number of disciplines, especially Social Sciences and the Arts & Humanities, books and book chapters are significant forms of research output.

These disciplines are not always well served by traditional tools of citation analysis such as Web of Science and Scopus that primarily focus on journal literature. Use the tools on this page to:

demonstrate the scholarly impact of your books and book chapters by citation metrics

Other indicators of the reception of a book or book chapter may include:

use as a university textbook
listed on 'bestseller' lists
awards and honours received
number of copies sold, editions and translations into other languages

Tools that track book & chapter citations

Google Scholar @ MQ This link opens in a new window
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database. It covers a large number of peer-reviewed journals in the scientific, technical, medical and social science fields, from an extensive range of international publishers. Also indexed are open access journals, conference proceedings, book series and trade publications, as well as patent records. References go back to 1996, while abstracts go back further. Linking to full-text articles is available.
Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Web of Science Core Collection provides access to the world's leading citation databases: Sciences Expanded (1889+), Social Sciences (1898+), Arts & Humanities (1975+). Book citation index. (2005+), Conference Proceedings, Science (1990+), Conference Proceedings, Social Science & Humanities (1990+), Emerging Sources Citation (2005+), Current Chemical Reactions (1985+), and Index Chemicus (1993+).

Finding reviews of books online

Book reviews in academic journals can provide an indication of the reception of your research by the scholarly community.

Reviews from popular sources, such as newspapers, may provide an indication of the impact of your research on the wider community.

Book reviews are available in some databases. Many allow you to select Review as the format type, and limit by publication date.

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
A searchable multisubject database which contains full text for over 4,450 scholarly publications including more than 3,500 peer-reviewed journals. Almost all academic areas of study are covered with some coverage extending back to 1975.
APAFT (Australian Public Affairs Full Text) This link opens in a new window Provides access to sources on Australia's political, economic and social affairs.
Australia & New Zealand Newsstream (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Access to newspapers and magazines online, including film and television reviews.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Factiva provides full text access to news items from a wide range of international sources and key websites.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
This collection provides access to over 2,000 leading scholarly journals in the humanities, history, social sciences and sciences. Provides full text access to back issues and front list of core scholarly journals as well as access to ebooks. Subjects areas mainly focus on arts, humanities and social sciences, but with coverage of some science areas. The Hebrew Journals collection which is also included is a specialised collection which makes available complete back runs of journals published in Hebrew in the areas of Jewish studies, language & literature and archaeology. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added on an ongoing basis. The database is divided into multidisciplinary and discipline specific collections.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Project Muse is a searchable database which gives full text access to subscribed books and journals. The collection focuses on the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics subject areas. Project MUSE contains scholarly journals from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies, with over 120 publishers currently participating.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database. It covers a large number of peer-reviewed journals in the scientific, technical, medical and social science fields, from an extensive range of international publishers. Also indexed are open access journals, conference proceedings, book series and trade publications, as well as patent records. References go back to 1996, while abstracts go back further. Linking to full-text articles is available.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Web of Science consists of several citation databases containing information from thousands of scholarly journals in all areas of research. The databases contain the references cited by the authors of the journal articles they cover. The cited references can be used as search terms, allowing a published work to be used to find other, later works that cite it. In addition, the databases can be searched by topic, author, source title, and address.

Choosing a publisher

30 ways academic book publishers add value to the process of research communication

Thoughtful list of considerations when choosing a book publisher from Francine O'Sullivan via the LSE Impact Blog.

How many libraries hold my books?

Use Library catalogues to determine how widely your book is held in Australian and international libraries.

Library Hub Discover
Giving you access to details of materials held in many UK national, academic and specialist libraries.

Trove This link opens in a new window
Material digitised by the National Library of Australia, including historical newspapers. Easy to navigate site with unpublished historical records also.

WorldCat
WorldCat contains over 36 million records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries. It includes manuscripts written as early as the 12th century, as well as books, CDs, videos, DVDs, and digital content.

Finding reviews of books in print

Here are some of the key journals for book reviews held in print in the Library.

Click on the link to be taken to the journal record in MultiSearch for details of holdings, location and request forms where applicable.

Australian Book Review This link opens in a new window
London Review of Books This link opens in a new window

New York Review of Books
Times Literary Supplement
Searchable access to the TLS archive from 1902-2009.