Bibliometrics, citation analysis and co-citation analysis: A review of literature .1.

Although the coinage of the term Bibliometrics is fairly recent, its usage and practice can be traced back to the 1890's. Bibliometrics has been used vastly as a quantitative method for evaluating the literature in different disciplines, particularly in the last two decades. This article is intended to review bibliometrics and one of its major methods citation analysis in two different parts: the first part of this article aims to present a background of the bibliometrics and citation analysis. The applications of citation analysis are also studied in this part In the second part of this article: document and author co-citation analysis as well as journal-by-journal and country-by-country citation analysis are studied. Mapping science as an application of co-citation analysis is also studied. finally the Limitations, problems and reliability and validity of citation analysis as a research method will be considered.