Latest Update: HISTCITE® Version 12.03.17

In order to take advantage of improvements to make HistCite compatible with search and export features in the new version of Web of Knowledge, please download the latest version of HistCite.

HistCite, available for free to Web of Science subscribers, is a flexible software solution to aid researchers in visualizing the results of literature searches in Web of Science. HistCite lets you analyze and organize the results of a search to obtain various views of the topic's structure, history, and relationships. It is easy, fast, and provides perspectives and information not otherwise available.

HistCite is a software implementation of algorithmic historiography, and has been developed by Dr Eugene Garfield, founder of the Institute for Scientific Information and the inventor of the Science Citation Index®.

HistCite goes back to an idea that I had 40 years ago in terms of visualizing and mapping the relationships to citation data.

-Dr. Eugene Garfield

With HistCite, you can:

Identify the key literature in a research field
By analyzing the results of a keyword search you can identify:

  • papers important to the development of the topic
  • important papers "missed" by your keyword search
  • most prolific and most cited authors and journals
  • other keywords that can be used to expand the collection

Analyze publication productivity and citation rates within a collection of research papers
Compare characteristics such as:

  • countries and institutions that authors publish from
  • most prolific and most cited authors within the groups
  • citation statistics for groups and subgroups (mean and median citation rates of papers, number of authors per paper, etc.)

Reconstruct the history and development of a research field
Analyze the content of an author search and you can find:

  • highly cited articles
  • important co-author relationships
  • earlier publications and documents important to the development of the author's work
  • time line of the authors' publications
  • view historiographs showing the key papers and timeline of a research field.

Who Chooses HistCite:

Just about any professional who needs to work with science literature is likely to find HistCite of value.

  • Researchers: For those who publish frequently, use of HistCite can help add new dimensions to routine papers or help in the preparation of a review paper. For those for whom publishing is expected but not routine, HistCite can help overcome inertia by making the literature review that precedes writing become less of a chore.
  • Science journalists: HistCite can make it easier to become acquainted with a new field upon assignment.
  • Historians of science: The historiographs and statistics produced by HistCite can help you better understand the development and status of research areas.
  • Journal editors: An editor can make a bibliography of his/her journal's output of articles, input it manually, and have HistCite analyze it. The resulting statistics and historiographs can foster a better understanding of the journal's role in its field.
  • Librarians: If a librarian performs searches for clients, analyzing the results through HistCite can add value to the search. If clients do their own searches, the librarian can suggest they use HistCite as a way to better understand the results. HistCite can also help librarians identify the most important journals for their special collections.
  • Research managers: A bibliography of papers produced by a research unit can be manually input and analyzed through HistCite. The resulting data can be helpful for quantitative and qualitative assessments of the unit's performance.

HistCite has a wide array of features to help you analyze and visualize your bibliography.

Analytical Features

  • Complete author list with papers published and citation ranks.
  • Complete journal list with papers published and citation ranks.
  • Complete list of countries of origin of papers published and citation ranks
  • Complete list of institutions of origin of papers published and citation ranks
  • Complete list of departments within institutions of origin of papers published and citation ranks.
  • Compiled list of title words
  • Compiled list of all cited references. This can be used to identify article important to the topic of your collection that were not picked up by your search.
  • Analysis by year of publication
  • Analysis by language of publication
  • Analysis by document type (research article, review, letter, etc.)

Search, Filter, Tag and Export

  • HistCite contains a search engine that allows you to search for records that meet your criteria.
  • HistCite allows you to click on any title word, author or journal name to see a filtered list of records that contain that search term.
  • You can save your subsets of records by adding custom-named tags to the records.
  • Subsets of records can be exported from collections for further analysis.

Graphical

  • The HistCite Graph Maker allows you to create historiographs  — graphical representations of  the historical development of a research field — of selected articles within your collection.

Editing
HistCite has several built in features to make editing your data collection easy.

  • Edit multiple records simultaneously to unify spelling variations in authors, addresses, or cited records.
  • Add records manually into your collection. This is useful if you want to add books or other document types that are not indexed in the Web of Science.
  • Automatically search and download records from the Web of Science to add to the collection.

Output
HistCite outputs subsets of data in many different formats for analysis in other programs, for incorporation into publications and presentations, and for presentation on web sites.

  • Excel-compatible comma-separated value files from all analytical tables.
  • High-quality graphics from Graph Maker.
  • Subsets of network data compatible with widely used network analysis programs such as Pajek or NetDraw.
  • Complete or selected HTML presentations of your analysis suitable for presentation on a web site.

NOTE: HISTCITE IS AVAILABLE FOR MICROSOFT WINDOWS ONLY

  • HistCite software is only available for PCs running Windows and uses a web browser. The software has been extensively tested with Internet Explorer, and also functions with other browsers.
  • HistCite analyzes the results of searches of the Web of Science. You need access to the Web of Science to take full advantage of HistCite's features.
  • Histcite is available free of charge. Click here to download your free copy now.

Contact Us

North America

Tel: +1 800.336.4474
Tel: +1 215.386.0100
Fax: +1 215.386.2911

Europe, Middle East & Africa

Tel: +44 20.7433.4000

Latin America

Brazil: +55 11 8370 9845
Other Countries: +1 215 823 5674

Japan

Tel: +81 3.5218.6500
Tel: 0800 888.8855 (free dial from Japan only)
Fax: +81 3.5218.7840

Asia Pacific

Australia & New Zealand:
     +61 2 8587 7636
China: +86 10 5760 1200
India: +91 11 3044 6419
Korea: +82 2 2076 8100
South East Asia & Pakistan:
     +65 6775 5088
Taiwan: +886 2 2503 3034

Next Steps

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