citation analysis as research method

research methods is one of the way for knowing the truth, hence citation analysis is the one.many experts and professionals in various field, count citation analysis as a research tool, but since citation analysis has some of the important characteristics of research methods such as describing phenomena objectively, having ideas, indicating the relationship between the phenomenon and use of tools, can be considerd as a research method. although we should point out like other research methods, citation analysis sufer from some threats like: do not pay attention biases in sampling data, ignoring the self-citation of sientists in the country, portion of review articles, the low of publication distance, do not consider methods of citation counting, lack of attention to variety of subject areas and ignore the differences between interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research assessment.if don't pay attention to these threat it can be cause to reduce its validity. by the way, this paper is try to describing the place of citation analysis as a research method and assign quntitative and qualitative and pathology of the validity of this method.