Definition
The Book Citation Index (BCI) is a bibliographic database that indexes scholarly books and the citations they contain, enabling users to track citation relationships among monographs, edited volumes, and book chapters. It is part of the Web of Science platform operated by Clarivate Analytics.
Overview
Launched in 2011, the Book Citation Index was developed to complement existing citation databases that primarily cover journal literature, such as the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index. The BCI covers a wide range of academic disciplines, including the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and aggregates citation data from a curated selection of scholarly books published worldwide. Researchers and institutions use the BCI for citation analysis, literature discovery, and assessment of the scholarly impact of books.
Etymology/Origin
The term combines “book,” referring to monographic scholarly works, with “citation index,” a concept originating in the early 20th century with Eugene Garfield’s creation of the Science Citation Index. “Book Citation Index” thus denotes an index specifically focused on citations found within books rather than journal articles.
Characteristics
- Coverage: Includes titles from major academic publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies; as of its initial release, the database indexed over 1.3 million books and 13 million book chapters.
- Citation Linking: Provides forward and backward citation links, allowing users to see both references cited by a given work and later works that cite it.
- Subject Classification: Employs the Web of Science subject categories and the Book Subject Category (BSC) schema to organize content.
- Search Functionality: Supports advanced search options, including author, title, ISBN, and keyword queries, as well as citation metrics such as citation counts and h‑index calculations for books.
- Integration: Integrated within the Web of Science Core Collection, enabling simultaneous searching across journal and book citation data.
- Updates: Receives regular updates from participating publishers to incorporate newly published books and citation information.
Related Topics
- Web of Science
- Science Citation Index
- Social Sciences Citation Index
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index
- Citation analysis
- Bibliometrics
- Scholarly publishing
- Academic databases
Note: Information presented is based on publicly available descriptions of the Book Citation Index provided by Clarivate Analytics and related bibliometric literature.