When browsing through scholarly journals and secondary sources in HeinOnline, it’s imperative to know how authoritative a source is for your research. ScholarCheck analyzes citation data to provide the most-cited journals, articles, and authors and aides researchers in quickly locating related material. Watch the brief video below to get an overview of HeinOnline’s ScholarCheck, or read below for more information.
What Is ScholarCheck?
ScholarCheck is one of HeinOnline’s most powerful research tools. It is a series of tools and features that:
- Analyzes the most-cited journals, articles, and authors
- Enables users to view and access articles and cases cited by other articles and cases, and to see how many times an article has been accessed by other HeinOnline users within a rolling 12-month period
- Provides inline hyperlinking so users can quickly access related material across HeinOnline and Fastcase content
- Allows users to sort search results by most-cited and most-accessed content
- Calculates metrics for ranking scholarly authors and displays these metrics in Author Profile Pages
ScholarCheck is available in most HeinOnline databases. Look for the ScholarCheck icon to determine where its features can be used.
ScholarCheck in Action
This tool can be found in various pages while researching in HeinOnline. Let’s explore how to use this tool effectively.
Within Search Results
For example, let’s run a search for “electoral college” in the Law Journal Library. From the results page, there are two ways users can access ScholarCheck metrics. First, the Sort by option listed above results provides users with the ability to sort by number of times cited by articles, number of times accessed in a rolling 12-month period, number of times cited by cases, or most-cited author. Secondly, users will see a box to the right of each result providing its ScholarCheck data.
For this example, let’s sort the results page by number of times cited by articles. From the results page, notice the ScholarCheck box listed to the right of the results now displays articles that have been cited the most by other articles.
In the example above, click the hyperlink Cited by 1000 Articles to be brought directly to this listing.
Within a Document
Users can also view ScholarCheck metrics from within a document. Using the example above, let’s view the first article titled Interest Group in American Public Law. From here, users will find the ScholarCheck box located above the table of contents.
Click the ScholarCheck box to display a pop-up containing the document’s metrics. Notice the color code which displays the different metrics. The color code is:
- Blue: cited by articles
- Red: cited by cases
- Green: Cited by Restatements of the Law* and other American Law Institute documents
- Gold: number of times accessed in rolling 12-month period
Clicking any of these hyperlinks brings the user directly to the listing.
*Restatements of the Law is an American legal encyclopedia produced by legal scholars and is more highly regarded by the courts than any other secondary resource.
Within Text
Users can quickly access relevant cited material across all subscribed HeinOnline content with ScholarCheck’s inline hyperlinking. Look for blue highlighted text within documents. These inline hyperlinks enable users to quickly access related content in HeinOnline, Fastcase, and the interwebs at large.
Within Author Profile Pages
From within HeinOnline’s author profile pages, ScholarCheck metrics are displayed prominently above the author’s works showcasing their scholarly impact. For an example, let’s view Bonnie Shucha‘s author profile page.
Metrics counted for each author include:
- Number of times cited by other articles in HeinOnline within the past five years only
- Number of times cited by other articles in HeinOnline beyond the past five years
- Number of times this author has been cited by cases available in HeinOnline or via Fastcase within the past five years only
- Number of times this author has been cited by cases available in HeinOnline or via Fastcase beyond the past five years
- Number of times an author’s articles have been accessed by HeinOnline users within a rolling 12-month period
- An overall ranking based on the calculation of five HeinOnline ScholarCheck metrics, otherwise known as ScholarRank
The following metrics are also included, but are not counted in the author’s overall rank:
- Average citations per article
- Average citations per document
- Number of self-citations
- H-Index: an author-level metric that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of an author.
Similar to a search results page, ScholarCheck metrics are also displayed next to each article in the author’s listing.
Within the Law Journal Library
Within the Law Journal Library, browse by the Most-Cited option to view:
- Most-cited authors
- Most-cited articles
- Most-cited journals
- ScholarRank’s Top 250 Authors
- ScholarRank’s Top 50 Articles
- ScholarRank’s Top 250 Journals
Let’s view ScholarRank’s Top 250 Authors in HeinOnline. ScholarRank is an overall ranking based on the calculation of five HeinOnline ScholarCheck metrics. The Z-score for each of the five metrics is taken and then averaged; the final average is entered into standard competition ranking to produce the overall ScholarRank for each author. The raw data and final ranking are updated on a monthly basis and can be found on the HeinOnline author’s profile page. For more information on how we calculate ScholarRank using ScholarCheck metrics, view our Knowledge Base article.
Within FastCase
While pulling up a case from Fastcase, users have access to HeinOnline’s ScholarCheck. For example, enter the case citation 367 F.3d 594 into the Case Law tab. Notice ScholarCheck metrics are easily accessible in the upper-right corner of the page. Click the hyperlink* Cited by 46 Cases to view the listing.
NOTE: Users must have access to Fastcase Premium in order to view cited by cases.
Help Us Help You
Do you have a suggestion or a topic you’d like covered in our Tip of the Week blog series? Email us at marketing@wshein.com. We’d love to hear from you!
Keep checking back with us for new tips and tricks! Don’t forget that HeinOnline search gurus are available at your fingertips: Email us, chat us, or call us at (800) 277-6995!
