Citation analysis tracks an article’s cited and citing references to discover an article’s wider relationships.

An example of a citation analysis in Web of Science using an article co-authored by ANU academic Prof Emily Banks (NCEPH), 353 cited references are listed along with the reference list of the article. 

Access the Web of Science via ANU Library's A-Z listing of databases.

An example of a Citation overview in Scopus using the same article, 363 cited references are listed.

Click on Citation overview to see the number of citations per year and who has cited.

An example of a Citation overview in Google Scholar using the same article, 448 cited references are listed.

The count is dependent on a few things:

• are all the articles published with the same credentials, all associated with the person's Orchid ID for example?
• Scopus and Web of Science are bibliographic databases and use structured metadata to construct the citation count from the list of journals that particular database indexes. 
• Scopus indexes peer reviewed content only. 
• Scopus excludes citations from unverified publishers, self-citations, and duplicate citations. This means that Scopus usually has less coverage and citation count compared to Google Scholar while it has higher quality and accuracy of citation data.
• Google Scholar does not use such a structured measure however the disparity is less on timeliness these days (i.e. a preprint article may be captured before it reaches the update of the database) rather different subject areas citation counts are counted differently e.g. Public policy and administration subjects for example may not be published in peer reviewed journals, and the searcher may need to look in grey literature and book content.
• Google Scholar uses material from non‐journal sources: conference papers, books, theses, and unpublished materials.
• Journals included in Web of Science are assigned with Impact Factor.
• Journals indexed in Scopus are assigned cite score. 
• WoS and Scopus predominantly use English literature for their citation count while Google Scholar  frequently uses non‐English literature for their citation count.