One of the more revealing techniques in the support of content development is a citation analysis. Simon Inger Consulting uses two different techniques to reveal your journals' standing amongst their peers.

The first technique maps out which journals cite your journals and vice versa and uses network mapping software to calculate the relationships between titles within a subject area. Careful interpretation of the results can reveal competing titles, opportunities for title development and marketing information to help target authors.

The second technique is to combine citation data with the publisher's own metadata to reveal key trends in citations over time, by article type, by author, by author's country of origin, by journal section (if applicable) and calculate key statistical measures that can help target authors, spot areas in need of development, address apparent editorial policy anomalies and so on.