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Cited Reference Variants

Every cited reference in the Cited Reference Index contains enough information to uniquely identify the document. Because only essential bibliographic information is captured, and because author names and source publication titles are unified as much as possible, the same reference cited in two different records should appear the same way in the database. This unification is what makes possible the Times Cited number on the Full Record page.

However, not all references to the same publication can be unified. As a consequence, a cited reference may have variations in the product.

For example, consider these variations of a reference to an article by A.J. Bard published in volume 374 of Nature:

BARD AJ    NATURE    1995     374     13     View Record

BARD AJ    NATURE    1995     13       374

The first reference contains the correct volume number and other bibliographic information. The View Record link takes you to the Full Record, which has a Times Cited count of 31.

The second reference contains a different volume number and it does not have a View Record link. Because a journal cannot have two different volume numbers in the same publication year, it is obvious that this is an incorrect reference to the same article.

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