Book and book chapter metrics

Book and book chapter metrics, like article metrics, can be used to provide evidence of your impact on the research community and in the wider social, economic and/or political sphere. 

Indicators of impact and/or prestige include:  

  • Citation counts 

  • Review coverage 

  • Downloads 

  • Library holdings 

  • Social media mentions 

You can also use qualitative measures, such as: 

  • Publisher prestige 

  • Awards and nominations received 

  • Translations or adaptations 

  • Reprints 

  • Citation counts

    You can use traditional citation counts (that is, citations by other authors in their work) as evidence of impact. 

    Tools that allow you to do this are the same as for individual articles: 

    • Web of Science
      - Search for a book or book chapter by title 
      - From the results page, see “Times cited” information to the right of the article result 
      - To see the number of citations by year, click on “Create citation report” 
       

    • Scopus
      - Search for a book or book chapter by title, and click on it 
      - On the Document Details page, select “View all metrics” (top right) 
      - This shows number of citations total, by year, citation benchmarking, and Field-Weighted Citation Impact. 
       

    • Google Scholar 
      - Search for a book or book chapter by title 
      - See “Cited by” figure under article result 

    However, citation counts alone are unlikely to provide an accurate picture. Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar do not index books and book chapters to the same extent as articles, and Google Scholar may also include duplicate results that can inflate citation counts. 

    It can also be difficult to assess citation counts for individual book chapters, as these may not be referenced individually but as part of the book. 

  • Book reviews (academic)

    Reviews of your book can provide evidence of its impact in both the academic and the wider communities, depending on where the review is published. 

    You can search for academic reviews in multidisciplinary databases: 

    • Web of Science
      - Search for the title of the book, and limit the results to “review” 
       

    • Scopus
      - Search for the title and limit the results to “review” 
       

    • Google Scholar  
      - (Search for the title and add “review” to your search terms 

     

    You can also use databases specific to your discipline. 

  • Book reviews (news media)

    You can search for book reviews in news databases and specific journals. 

    News databases available at the University of Adelaide can be found here: 

    https://libguides.adelaide.edu.au/news 

    Book review periodicals (e.g. Australian Book Review, Times Literary Supplement) are here: 

    https://libguides.adelaide.edu.au/book_reviews 

    Other sources of book reviews include 

    • Amazon 

    • Goodreads 

    See the Metrics Toolkit (on books and book chapters) for information on responsible use of these sources. 

  • Downloads

    The number of times a book or book chapter has been downloaded may be seen as an indicator of potential citations and other forms of attention.  

     

    Library Search downloads

    Some, though not all, publishers provide this information. You can check directly on the relevant platform. (Note: You may need to find the book in Library Search and then sign in to access it, in order to see this information.) 

  • Library holdings

    You can use the number of libraries that have a copy of your book to make a case for how well the book is seen to meet researcher/user needs. 

    • Trove: provides information about holdings in Australian libraries  
      - Type your title in the search box (use quotation marks “ “ to get a more accurate result) 
      - Select “Books and Libraries” 

    • WorldCat: type 'all' in the 'Enter your location' box to see worldwide holdings of the book 

  • Social media

    You can track social media, news, government and policy mentions of your books and book chapters via Altmetric Explorer. These mentions can be used to make a case for the wider impact of your research. 

    The University of Adelaide has its own Altmetric Explorer portal, and all university outputs are tracked automatically. You can view attention for all your works as a whole, or search for individual publications.