How to Get More Citations Using Legitimate Methods

Dr. Shankru Guggari, Ph.D. | Apr 02, 2025

Introduction

The number of citations an article receives after getting published in a peer-reviewed journal reflects its impact and visibility within the research community. Consequently, researchers strive to find effective and legitimate methods to boost their citation count. While various ethical strategies exist, a one-size-fits-all solution does not exist in reality due to several influencing factors. This article explores several citation strategies to increase article citations after your manuscript gets published.

Top Citation Strategies for Your Journal Articles

Using the strategies outlined below, researchers can increase scholarly article citations ethically and legitimately.  

Publish in Open Access Journals

Open access journals offer unrestricted access to published research. Publishing in open access journals enables researchers to reach a global audience. Owing to the wide availability of the internet, open access journals including Cureus Journals are becoming popular in the academic community. Anyone with a basic internet connection can easily access scholarly articles published in peer-reviewed open access journals and share them with their research network as well as with lay audiences on social media.   

Benefits of Publishing in Open Access Journals

  • Published articles accessible without any payment barrier
  • Global reach and increased citations for published articles
  • Wider collaboration
  • Higher Altmetric scores
  • More article downloads
  • More news and policy mentions
  • More citations by patents
  • Easy licensing terms
  • More scope for interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and convergence research
  • Compliance with funding agency mandates
  • Better funding opportunities

​​​​​​​Promote Your Research on Social Media and at Conferences

Researchers should create engaging posts (with appropriate hashtags) and highlight key research findings on social media, especially on professional networking platforms such as LinkedIn. It is also advisable to design creatives using easy-to-use platforms such as Canva.

Besides publishing manuscripts in open access peer-reviewed journals, researchers should also present their work at good conferences. It is a known fact that research collaborations take shape at various conferences across the globe. Therefore, attending these conferences, asking diligent questions, and answering audience queries in a meaningful manner can help establish both short- and long-term research collaborations. 

Unleash the Power of Science Communication

Science communication—the process of conveying key findings and their implications to various audiences—can significantly enhance your article’s outreach and citation count. Powerful platforms like the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s EurekAlert attract global attention. Researchers often share press releases and even graphical abstracts on this science communication platform. Media outlets frequently feature interesting research published here. While the platform is freely accessible, it charges a per-article or annual subscription fee for press releases. More details can be found here.

Publish Review Articles

This recommendation may not necessarily apply to all researchers. However, when researchers gain sufficient seniority, they can start writing authoritative review articles. Review articles provide deep insights into highly specialized or niche research areas. As a result, they often receive a significant number of citations.

Share Raw Data Alongside Your Article

Sharing raw data significantly enhances the transparency, credibility, and reproducibility of your research. Providing supplementary files alongside your submission further supports your findings and allows for deeper inspection by other researchers from your field of study. Raw data can be submitted through external repositories, institutional databases, preprint servers, or data journals, where it receives a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for citation. Supplementary materials typically include raw data, extended tables, figures, protocols, or additional analyses, providing further insights into the topic under consideration. These good practices not only demonstrate the thoroughness of your work but also help attract more interest and citations.

Use Appropriate Keywords

Be strategic and thorough when adding relevant keywords to your journal manuscript. Add frequently searched terms related to your topic to the title, abstract, and body of your manuscript. Include a dedicated keywords section as well. Use synonyms, emerging trends, and related concepts to enhance visibility and ensure your published articles rank prominently in search results.

Other Measures 

To increase their citation count, researchers should engage in networking at various academic and non-academic events, establish meaningful collaborations in academia and industry, and focus on research topics that address burning questions within their respective fields of study. Acknowledging and referencing the work of peers whose research opposes your viewpoint is crucial, as it demonstrates transparency and openness. Researchers should also keep themselves informed about key figures in their discipline and cite their work as and when required. However, researchers must refrain from engaging with citation cartels and avoid citing unnecessary works, including their own, solely for personal gains.   

Bonus Tips

Maintain Consistency in Name and Affiliation: Using a consistent name and institutional affiliation across all publications ensures that your work is easily discovered and correctly attributed.

Secure a Unique Researcher Identifier: If you have a common name or if your name appears in an inconsistent format across publications, obtain a ResearcherID or similar identifier to consolidate your work under a single profile. This simplifies citation while strengthening your academic presence.

Track Your Articles’ Altmetric Scores: Altmetric scores quantitatively measure the broader impact of research by tracking mentions across social media, news, blogs, and policy documents. Researchers should actively monitor how their shared research is performing across these channels. Published journal articles with high Altmetric scores often gain increased visibility, leading to increased citations.

Maintain a Research Blog or Website: Creating a website or blog to share the most interesting aspects of your research (of course, using SEO-optimized titles, headings, meta descriptions, keywords, and appropriate images) increases your overall visibility on the internet. This can have a positive impact on your citation count in the long run.

Post to Preprint Servers: Preprinting has its own perks. By posting to preprint servers, researchers can look forward to getting cited more often owing to the increased global visibility and higher likelihood of collaboration.

Conclusion

Increasing the citation count of your published papers requires ethical and consistent efforts. Resorting to legitimate methods can produce encouraging results. However, researchers must also remember to distance themselves from fraudulent techniques for artificially inflating their citation count. By adopting legitimate strategies such as publishing in open access journals, sharing your work on websites, blogs, preprint servers, and social media, adding the right set of keywords, sharing raw data, presenting at conferences, posting on science communication platforms, and networking within your academic community, authors can increase the visibility of their published works and ethically boost their citation count.