Citations

Your ResearchGate profile's Stats tab is your go-to place for a detailed overview of the citations your work has received, helping you track your impact effortlessly. Here, you can see how many times your publications have been cited and where those citations appeared. You can even explore the profiles of researchers who have cited your work.

Whenever possible, we'll show you exactly what was said about your research and allow you to view the citation within its original publication. You'll also find this information in your weekly stats report, which is easily accessible from your Stats tab.

The citations section of your Stats tab also features your h-index, a key metric that measures your research output and citation impact. To understand more about your h-index and its calculation, you can find detailed information here.

On your Stats tab, you have the flexibility to track your citations over time, choosing a weekly, monthly, or yearly breakdown to suit your needs.

Why some citations may not show

We work hard to regularly import accurate citation data from various sources. While standard citation styles are usually displayed correctly on ResearchGate, sometimes it can be challenging to ensure complete accuracy.

Here’s how you can help ensure your citations appear on ResearchGate:

• Make sure the citing research item is on ResearchGate. If it's not in our database, we can't track the citation.

• Check for complete and accurate metadata. Ensure the research item has all the necessary details like publication date, journal, and abstract.

• Avoid scanned PDFs. We can't extract citations from full-text PDFs created by scanning a hard copy.

If you've recently added a publication and notice missing citations, please be patient. It can take some time for us to extract all the citations. Please note that we are unable to manually add citations from other sources like Google Scholar.

We understand that it can be frustrating when citations aren't displayed, and we're continuously working on improving our citation extraction and matching processes.

Why your citations might decrease

A decrease in your citation count or h-index can happen for a variety of reasons, including:

• Duplicate publications: You might have been cited by a publication that was duplicated in our system. When we merge these duplicates, it can result in a lost citation.

• Removed publications: An author of a publication that cited you may have removed their work from our database entirely.

With over a billion citations in our database, we are unable to investigate the specific cause of every fluctuation in citation count or h-index.

Keeping track of your citations

When new citations are matched to your publications, you'll typically receive an email or in-platform notification. These citations will be added to your Stats tab, though it can take up to 48 hours for these changes to be fully reflected. We appreciate your patience as we work to update your citation count as quickly as possible.

You'll find two ways to view your citation data:

• Your Citation Graph: This graph on your Stats tab shows the progression of your scientific impact over time, based on the publication date of the citing articles. It focuses on your most recent citations.

• Your Weekly Stats Report: This report, accessible from your Stats tab, provides a detailed breakdown of the citations our algorithms have matched to your publications within that specific week. This highlights recent activity and may include citations from older publications that have recently been matched.

It's normal for your citation graph to sometimes show fewer citations than what you see in your weekly report or notifications. This is because the graph prioritizes showing your most recent citations, while the weekly report includes all citations matched in that week, regardless of the citing article's publication date.