How to Increase Citations for Your Research Paper

Citations follow readers. Most of what you can do happens before and just after publication, and none of it requires gaming the system.

Guide · 9 min read · Directive Publications Editorial Team

What actually earns a citation

A citation happens when another author, writing their own paper, needs a source for a specific statement and your paper is the one they find, can open, and trust. Every part of that sentence is something you can influence.

You cannot change how important your finding is once it is published. You can change how many of the right readers encounter it, whether they hit a paywall, whether they can tell it is yours, and whether the finding is stated clearly enough to cite in one line. That is the honest version of learning how to increase citations, and it is the only version worth your time.

This guide is a plan in seven steps, followed by what to avoid and how to track progress. None of it is a shortcut. It is about removing the reasons a paper that deserves to be cited is not.

The seven-step plan

Work through these in order. The first three happen before you submit, the last four around and after publication.

1. Make the main finding easy to cite. One clear, specific claim another author could paraphrase in a sentence.
2. Write a findable title and abstract. The words your readers type into a search box, in the places search tools look.
3. Choose a journal your readers use. Indexed where your field searches, read by the people you cite.
4. Make a free copy available. Open access, a permitted repository deposit, or a preprint.
5. Keep your author identity consistent. One name form, an ORCID iD, a public Google Scholar profile.
6. Share the data and code. In a repository that issues a DOI, cited in the paper.
7. Bring the paper to the people who need it. Talks, direct emails, and a link to the free version every time.

The sections below explain each group of steps and what to do on the day.

Before submission: make the paper findable and citable

Give other authors a sentence to cite

Authors usually cite a paper to support one statement: "X increases Y in population Z", "method A outperforms method B for this task", "this complication was reported after this procedure". If a reader finishes your abstract unsure what that statement would be, they are less likely to cite you even if they read the whole paper.

Before you submit, try this test. Write the sentence you would hope to see in someone else's introduction, with your paper as the reference. If you cannot write it, your abstract and conclusion need sharpening, not your outreach. Then check that the same claim, with the same numbers and the same population, appears in the abstract, the last paragraph of the discussion, and any summary figure or table.

Reusable material also attracts citations: a clearly reported method, a validated questionnaire, a dataset, a summary table others can compare against. Report these fully enough that someone could use them without writing to you first.

Write for the search box

Most readers find papers through searches in databases and search engines, and those tools rely heavily on your title, abstract and keywords. Use the terms your readers actually search for, not only your lab's shorthand. Spell out an abbreviation at least once in the abstract. Name the population, condition or organism and the design.

Our guide to choosing keywords so your paper gets found covers how to pick terms that complement your title rather than repeat it.

Choose the journal for its readers

The journal decides which databases your paper appears in and which readers see its table of contents. A journal that is not indexed where your field searches makes every later step harder. Before you submit, check that the journal is indexed in the databases your colleagues use, and look at whether the authors you cite most often publish or read there.

At publication: remove the paywall

A reader who hits a paywall may cite something else they can open. A large 2018 analysis of article access by Piwowar and colleagues in PeerJ found that, accounting for article age and discipline, open access articles received 18% more citations than average, an effect driven mainly by Green and Hybrid open access. Treat that as an association, not a guarantee: authors may make their stronger papers open, and the study does not show what any single paper would gain.

Your options, depending on the journal:

If you deposit a copy yourself, an institutional repository is usually the simplest route. Google Scholar's own inclusion guidance suggests authors check whether their institutional repository is already configured for indexing in Google Scholar, and it requires PDFs to contain searchable text. Our guide to self-archiving your paper in a repository walks through versions and embargoes.

Make sure the citations are counted as yours

Citations only help your record if databases attribute them to you. Name variants, initials and shared surnames cause real errors. Google Scholar notes that it uses "a statistical model to try to tell different authors apart" and that "such automatic processes are not always accurate."

Three habits prevent most problems:

• Use one name form on every paper. Decide how your name appears, including middle initials and hyphens, and keep it.
• Give your ORCID iD at submission. A persistent identifier separates you from other researchers with similar names, and many journals collect it in the submission system.
• Keep a public Google Scholar profile. Profiles are private by default. According to Google Scholar's profile help page, you make one public from the Edit option, and a public profile needs a verified email address at your institution to appear in search results for your name.

Check your profile after each paper appears. If your preprint and the published article show up as separate entries, select both and use Merge so their citations combine. Remove papers that belong to someone else with a similar name, because they make your whole profile less credible.

Accuracy works in both directions. When you cite others, copy references from the source or its DOI rather than from another paper's reference list, so the citations you give are counted correctly too.

Share the data and code

A dataset or analysis script that others reuse is cited in its own right, and it gives readers a further reason to cite the paper that describes it. Deposit data and code in a repository that issues a DOI, such as Zenodo or a subject repository your field already uses, and cite them in your reference list and data availability statement.

For clinical data, check your consent terms, ethics approval and the journal's data policy before sharing anything. When individual-level data cannot be shared, describe how other researchers can request access instead.

After publication: bring the paper to its readers

Publication is when most authors stop. It is also when a small amount of targeted effort goes furthest.

• Present it where your readers gather. A talk or poster at a meeting in your subfield puts the finding in front of people writing related papers.
• Send it to the people it concerns. A short, personal email to researchers whose work you extend, with one line on what you found and a link, is reasonable professional courtesy. Send it once, and do not ask them to cite it.
• Link to the free version every time. Your profile pages, email signature, lab website and any social media posts should point to the open access version or repository copy, not a paywalled page.
• Write a plain-language summary. A short, accurate account helps clinicians, journalists and patient groups understand and pass on the work.

Social media can widen your reach, but treat it as one route to readers rather than a citation strategy. The researchers most likely to cite you are usually reachable more directly.

What not to do

Some ways to raise a citation count damage your reputation more than they help it. The Committee on Publication Ethics describes citation manipulation in a 2019 discussion document as behaviour intended to inflate citation counts for personal gain, including excessive self-citation, excessive citation of the journal publishing the article, and coordinated citation between journals.

Avoid these:

• Self-citation that supports nothing. Cite your earlier work where it is the right source for a statement, such as a method you developed. Do not add it simply because it is yours.
• Citation trading. Agreeing with colleagues to cite each other's papers regardless of relevance is the kind of coordinated citation COPE describes.
• Pressuring others. As a reviewer or editor, asking authors to cite your work without a specific scholarly reason is coercive.
• Paid "visibility" or citation services. Any service that promises citations, rather than readers, is selling something you cannot get honestly.

Our explainer on coercive citations and citation rings covers how these are detected and what to do if someone pressures you.

Track progress without obsessing

Citations accumulate slowly. Other authors have to find your paper, write their own, get it reviewed and see it published, and that cycle differs widely between fields and article types. Judge a paper over years, not weeks.

A short routine is enough:

1. Turn on Google Scholar alerts for new citations to your articles from the Follow option on your profile
2. Note which citing papers use your work and for what claim, so you learn which findings travel
3. Recheck your profile for merged versions and misattributed papers each time you publish
4. Update your repository copy if the published version is corrected

The second item is the most useful. The way others cite your work tells you which of your findings they found clear and reusable, and that is the best guide to writing the next paper.

When you are choosing where your next manuscript goes, the Directive Publications author guidelines set out what we ask for at submission, and you can submit your manuscript directly.