A classification of author co‐citations: Definitions and search strategies

The term author co‐citation is defined and classified according to four distinct forms: the pure first‐author co‐citation, the pure author co‐citation, the general author co‐citation, and the special co‐author/co‐citation. Each form can be used to obtain one count in an author co‐citation study, based on a binary counting rule, which either recognizes the co‐citedness of two authors in a given reference list (1) or does not (0). Most studies using author co‐citations have relied solely on first‐author co‐citation counts as evidence of an author's oeuvre or body of work contributed to a research field. In this article, we argue that an author's contribution to a selected field of study should not be limited, but should be based on his/her complete list of publications, regardless of author ranking. We discuss the implications associated with using each co‐citation form and show where simple first‐author co‐citations fit within our classification scheme. Examples are given to substantiate each author co‐citation form defined in our classification, including a set of sample Dialog™ searches using references extracted from the SciSearch database.