The case for the Humanities Citation Index (HuCI): a citation index by the humanities, for the humanities

Abstract

Citation indexes are by now part of the research infrastructure in use by most scientists: a necessary tool in order to cope with the increasing amounts of scientific literature being published. Commercial citation indexes are designed for the sciences and have uneven coverage and unsatisfactory characteristics for humanities scholars, while no comprehensive citation index is published by a public organisation. We argue that an open citation index for the humanities is desirable, for four reasons: it would greatly improve and accelerate the retrieval of sources, it would offer a way to interlink collections across repositories (such as archives and libraries), it would foster the adoption of metadata standards and best practices by all stakeholders (including publishers) and it would contribute research data to fields such as bibliometrics and science studies. We also suggest that the citation index should be informed by a set of requirements relevant to the humanities. We discuss four such requirements: source coverage must be comprehensive, including books and citations to primary sources; there needs to be chronological depth, as scholarship in the humanities remains relevant over time; the index should be collection driven, leveraging the accumulated thematic collections of specialised research libraries; and it should be rich in context in order to allow for the qualification of each citation, for example, by providing citation excerpts. We detail the fit-for-purpose research infrastructure which can make the Humanities Citation Index a reality. Ultimately, we argue that a citation index for the humanities can be created by humanists, via a collaborative, distributed and open effort.

Citation network analysis for viewpoint plurality assessment of historical corpora: The case of the medieval rabbinic literature

“…Additionally, those studies have a predominant focus on several key areas: (i) Comparisons of the humanities to other disciplines in terms of growth timeframes, internationality, and interconnectivity [ 37 ]; (ii) exploration of the potentially problematic role of bibliometrics in performance evaluation within the humanities [ 40 , 41 ]; (iii) mapping the cognitive and social structure of the humanities, such as understanding the relationships among various disciplines and sub-disciplines in institutional frameworks and personal relations [ 19 , 42 , 43 ]. Challenges in this field include diverse publication practices in the humanities and the absence of comprehensive data sources and tools like the SCI (Science Citation Index) and SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) [ 37 – 39 , 44 – 46 ]. Must [ 47 ] suggests several added values that humanities citation databases and their large-scale analysis could provide, including sustainability and re-actualization of past studies, tracing the formation of schools and international cooperation communities, facilitating the connection and reuse of sources traditionally accessible to and studied by a limited number of individuals, and exposing a variety of sources to large communities of scholars.…”

Minding the gap: Bibliometric equity in theology and religious studies

“…Other relatively more minor but equally important projects are also emerging in the humanities attempting to mine citations of all kinds, such as the Cited Loci and Linked Books [6]. Theology and religious studies could also benefit from recommendations proposed for the Humanities Citation Index (HuCI): comprehensive coverage including books and citations to primary sources; chronological depth; thematic collection-driven content; rich in context to qualify each citation [39].…”

Moving from piecemeal to systematic: Reprioritizing how academic libraries approach research information management

“…Finally, open RIM systems that are populated by researcher-supplied data can offer a more complete picture of an institution's research activities. Large commercial citation indexes were built for the sciences and offer poor coverage of certain disciplines, such as the humanities [25]. RIM systems built on the automated ingest of data from these databases reproduce these gaps in disciplinary coverage and lack data on researchers producing scholarship not captured in journal articles, such as lectures, technical reports, blogs, and white papers [26].…”