The construction of the Taiwan Humanities Citation Index
| Pages | 410-419 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520410570535 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Author | Kuang‐hua Chen |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The construction of the
Taiwan Humanities
Citation Index
Kuang-hua Chen
The author
Kuang-hua Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan.
Keywords
Software tools, Research, Taiwan
Abstract
The TaiwanHumanities Citation Index (THCI) is Taiwan’s effort to
construct a search, research, and evaluation tool for research in
the arts and humanities. This article describes the design,
framework, features, and policies and rules of the THCI. Citation
analysis has been regarded as a systematic way to investigate
research developments and trends. Since the Arts & Humanities
Citation Index (A&HCI) indexes mostly English journals, the THCI
could become an auxiliary citation index of the A&HCI for
Taiwanese researchers.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
Introduction
In the history of research development, research or
innovation is built on the base of preceding research.
Researchers usually “cite” the ideas and papers of
pioneers. This behavior is called “citation”. A
citation includes two objects: one is the source work;
the other is the cited work. Although there are many
reasons for a citation (Weinstock, 1971), the cited
work has something to do with the source work. For
general users, cited works provide a guide to further
reading. For researchers, the collection of
information about cited works is a treasure for
citation analysis. Citation analysis permits the
researcher to comprehend current developments in
subject fields, the properties of bibliographical
usage, and research trends.
The ISI has produced the Science Citation
Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index
(SSCI), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index
(A&HCI) for many years. The Library of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences has produced the
Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD) since
1989 (Meng, 1995). Nanjing University in
mainland China and the Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology produce the Chinese
Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) (Su et al.,
2001). These citation index databases have a great
impact on research. Some researchers apply
citation data to evaluate the contributions of
research fellows, journals, or institutes (Garfield,
1972); some apply citation data to analyze the
structures of specified research fields (Henry,
1973); some apply citation data to retrospectively
evaluate research trends, and to make projections
about future trends (Garfield, 1979).
Most journals in ISI’s citation indexes are
published in English. In Taiwan, we need local
citation index databases for local requirements.
The CSCD and CSSCI provide citation data for
researchers in mainland China. If we want to have
an overall picture of Taiwaneseresearch in the arts
and humanities, we have to construct a Taiwan
Humanities Citation Index (THCI).
The purpose of the THCI project is to construct
a citation index for humanities journals published
in Taiwan. At the same time, we hope researchers
will be able to apply the THCI to understand
humanities research, to analyse the changing
patterns of humanities studies, and to predict
future trends in the humanities.
Online Information Review
Volume 28 · Number 6 · 2004 · pp.410-419
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520410570535
Revised article received 22 July 2004
Accepted for publication 29 July 2004
The author is grateful to the staff of the THCI for
their hard work on this project. The THCI project is
supported by the Centre for Humanities Research of
the National Science Council, Republic of China
(www.hrc.ntu.edu.tw/)
410
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