All guides: Research metrics: Book metrics

Book impact

It is generally more difficult to find citations to books than to journal articles, although Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar all include some citing references to books and book chapters.

Some other ways of demonstrating book and book chapter impact are through:

Australian and international library holdings
Book reviews
Sales figures from publishers
Prizes, awards and honours received
Editions and translations
Used as a university textbook
Published by high quality publisher or respected editor
Cited in policy or practice documents
Mentions in the media - see Altmetrics guide

Library Holdings

The following can be searched to locate library holdings of book titles:

Trove
From the National Library of Australia. Search for books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, and more
WorldCat
WorldCat connects thousands of library's holdings around the world in one place, making it easy to browse via one search box.
COPAC
Access to details of materials held in many national, academic and specialist libraries in the United Kingdom

Book reviews

Reviews of books and chapters can provide evidence of how they have been received by the scholarly community and outside of academia.

Reviews can be found in the scholarly literature as well as in popular sources, such as newspapers and magazines.

Some suggested databases to search for reviews are:

Library Search
Search for the title of the book or chapter then select the Resource type: Book reviews
Amazon.com
Includes the full text of some book reviews "Editorial reviews", although it is primarily a bookselling site.
Google Books
Input author's family name, title or title keywords and review. The full record includes a link to editorial and user reviews.

Australia & New Zealand Newsstream (ProQuest)
Provides Access to the full text of major Australian and New Zealand newspapers. It includes regional and rural radio transcripts and news from current affairs television programs such as the ABC 7.30 Report.
Factiva
Factiva is the major source for Australian newspapers - both the Fairfax and Murdoch press, and has exclusive rights to the Australian Financial Review & the Business Review Weekly. It is a Dow Jones & Reuters Company product and offers content from over 9,000 sources of information. Access limited to 5 concurrent users.
JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive
In Advanced Search type one or two keywords from the book title; Under Narrow By: Item Type check Review, then click Search.
Note that JSTOR is an archive and does not index the most recent five years of journals.
Project Muse
Enter search terms and under Type of Content choose Reviews, then click Search.
ProQuest
Search for title keywords and the author's family name.
When brief results dispay, from the "Narrow results by" panel choose the Document type, Review.
Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)
In Cited Reference Search, enter the author name in the cited Author box, the first words of the book title in the Cited Work box and click Search.
When results display, Select All, scroll to bottom of screen and under 'Restrict results' choose Book Review, then click Finish Search.

Library subject guides

Research metrics

Book impact

Library Holdings

Book reviews