Book Citation Index
The Book Citation Index (BCI, BKCI) is an online, subscription-based service that indexes citations for books. It is run by Clarivate Analytics and is part of the Web of Science Core Collection. Launched in 2011, it includes more than 60,000 books published from 2005 onward. Books can be electronic or printed and may contain chapters and scholarly articles based on original research or reviews. The index covers both series and non-series books, as long as they include full footnotes. There are two editions: Science and Social Sciences & Humanities. The Science edition covers fields such as physics and chemistry, engineering, computing and technology, clinical medicine, life sciences, and agriculture and biology. Both editions include titles dating back to 2005.
In 2014, researchers Blaise Cronin and Cassidy Sugimoto noted that impact assessments for book-based fields need a database with many books, and the Book Citation Index helps meet this need. They also acknowledged that Google Books offered a free and broader option for such analyses at the time.
A 2013 article highlighted several limitations of the Book Citation Index: many items lack address information, citation counts can be inflated, there is no consistent way to track cumulative citations across different levels, and counts can vary between searches. The article also said that building a reliable citation data source for monographs is challenging because books have unique requirements, classification issues, and complex roles as both cited and citing works.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 17:59 (CET).