Parsing Citations using Visual Basic for Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide

Abstract

The most difficult hurdle in a citation analysis project is getting the citations from a set of bibliographies to a spreadsheet or database where they can be analyzed. When I approached my first citation analysis project in January 2011, I explored several methods for automating the process. This document describes the methods I tried, and their pros and cons, as well as the multi-step method I employed in the end. The process includes VBA code written for Microsoft Word and Microsoft Access. The code is not reproduced in this paper, but is available via email for other researchers wishing to use the same or a similar process.