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Understand how the intellectual structure of a discipline defines or influences the types of research questions, data, and publication practices that are acceptable scholarship in the discipline. Learn how to recognize and locate seminal papers.

Explore the citation practices of researchers and learn about citation analysis. Describe the assumptions and the pros and cons of using citation analysis to identify important publications. 

Define citation database and Identify, critique, and select the different kinds of tools that include citation data. Compare two major sources of article-level citation data: Web of Science and Google Scholar. Understand the purpose/use/misuse of impact factors and Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

Understand the importance of searching databases with expertise. Learn about and apply good search practices, including topic analysis and structure of search statements. Access, perform good topical searches, and refine search results in the Web of Science database.

Use the Web of Science database to search a topic and analyze the results for article-level citation data. Use Journal Citation Reports to locate journal impact factors by discipline.   Interpret citation data and apply to your own research topic.

Use the “Analyze” function in Web of Science to identify major authors, institutions, and journals in a research area and critique, interpret, and apply findings.