This book deals with the evaluation of scholarly research performance, and focuses on the contribution of scholarly work to the advancement of scholarly knowledge. Its principal question is: how can citation analysis be used properly as a tool in the assessment of such a contribution?
It provides a wide range of important facts, and corrects a number of common misunderstandings about citation analysis. It introduces basic notions and distinctions, and deals both with theoretical and technical aspects, and with its applicability in various policy contexts, at the level of individual scholars, research groups, departments, institutions, national scholarly systems, disciplines or subfields, and scholarly journals.