What Is Publish or Perish and How Do You Use It for Citation Analysis?
Publish or Perish is a citation-analysis software program hosted on Harzing.com, created by Anne-Wil Harzing. It retrieves and analyzes academic citation data to help you measure research impact and present your citation record. It is most useful for early career academics, researchers preparing promotion or funding applications, and anyone who needs to demonstrate the reach of their published work beyond a single database's numbers.
What the software does
Publish or Perish is described on Harzing.com as software for citation analysis. Its core function is to pull citation data and turn it into a set of impact metrics you can interpret and present.
According to the site, it is one of the resources hosted alongside Anne-Wil Harzing's academic career guides, white papers, the Journal Quality List, and the CYGNA Women in Academia pages. The Harzing.com blog also covers the software directly, which means guidance on using it sits alongside broader material on academic publishing, research impact, and academic careers.
How citation analysis works in practice
The general workflow for a tool like this is:
- Choose your data source. Citation-analysis software queries external sources to find who has cited your work. The specific sources available depend on the version and configuration of the software.
- Enter your search parameters. You typically search by author name, publication title, or a set of works.
- Review the retrieved records. The software returns matching publications and their citation counts.
- Read the computed metrics. The software calculates summary statistics from the citation data it retrieves.
- Export or present the results. You can use the output to build a citation narrative for applications, reviews, or your own assessment.
The expected result is a structured picture of your citation record rather than a raw list of numbers.
Core metrics you will encounter
Citation-analysis tools commonly report a standard set of indicators. The table below summarizes what each one tells you.
| Metric | What it measures | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Total citations | Sum of all citations to your work | Broad indicator of overall reach |
| Citations per year | Average citations received annually | Shows sustained vs. spiky impact |
| h-index | Number of papers (h) that each have at least h citations | Balances productivity and impact |
| g-index | Gives more weight to highly cited papers | Rewards work with outsized influence |
| Individual paper counts | Citations per publication | Identifies your strongest outputs |
The h-index and g-index are the two most commonly cited summary measures. The h-index rises slowly and can understate the contribution of a few very highly cited papers; the g-index is designed to give those papers more credit. Reading both together gives a fuller picture than either alone.
Finding the pearls in your citation record
Harzing.com features a blog post titled "Finding the pearls in your citation record," which describes using Publish or Perish to present your academic citation record to its best advantage. The approach it outlines is to find the pearls in your record, polish them, and string them into a "beautiful necklace" that presents your citation story effectively.
In practical terms, that means:
- Identify your standout outputs. Look for the papers with the highest citation counts or the steepest citation growth.
- Contextualize them. A single highly cited paper can carry a record; explain its significance rather than listing it flatly.
- Build a narrative. Group and order your evidence so it tells a coherent story about your research trajectory, not just a ranked list.
This matters because raw metrics rarely speak for themselves in promotion, hiring, or funding contexts. A curated citation story is more persuasive than an exported table.
Common cautions and limitations
- Data sources differ. Different citation databases index different journals, languages, and document types. Counts from one source will not match another, so avoid mixing sources within a single comparison.
- Coverage is uneven. Fields with strong preprint cultures, non-English publishing, or book-based outputs may be under- or over-represented depending on the source queried.
- Metrics are not quality judgments. A high citation count reflects attention, not necessarily importance or correctness. Use metrics alongside qualitative evidence.
- Self-citations and duplicates. Retrieved records may include self-citations or duplicate entries; check before presenting figures.
- Version and configuration matter. Available features and data sources can change between versions, so confirm what your installation supports before relying on a specific metric.
Where to start on Harzing.com
If you are new to academic life, Harzing.com points early career academics to its "Working in academia" page as the best starting point. That page acts as a container for the site's books, blog posts, videos, and software related to academic careers. From there you can reach the Publish or Perish software, the Journal Quality List, and the blog's coverage of citation analysis and research impact.
For the specific task of presenting your citation record, the "Finding the pearls in your citation record" post is the most directly relevant resource on the site.