Research impact is an increasingly important aspect in securing government funding for research activity, NRF rating, institutional ranking and the management of research output within the university sector and this has placed the emphasis on tracking citations of a researcher’s published works and publishing within highly-ranked journals.
Citation analysis assumes that research published in prestigious journals with high impact scores and research published by scientists who enjoy high impact ratings will be cited more frequently than other research (Vucovich, Baker & Smith (2008:63). A further assumption is that the more a researcher or a paper is cited, the higher the impact of the research will be on the subject discipline (Meho, 2007:1).
The importance of both citations and citation analysis in scholarly information should be understood to fully appreciate the value of citation resources as a scholarly tool.