First of all, the citation index can reflect the influence of the article. A widely quoted article usually means that its views or findings have important influence in academic circles, so it is accepted and quoted by more scholars. On the other hand, if the citation index of an article is low, it may indicate that its views or findings have not been widely recognized or applied.
Secondly, the citation index can also reflect the author's academic status. The author with high citation index is usually regarded as an authority in this field, and his/her articles have high academic value. Therefore, citation index is also an important index to evaluate the author's academic influence.
In addition, citation index can also help readers filter and evaluate information. When consulting relevant literature, readers usually give priority to articles with high citation index because these articles are more likely to contain valuable information. At the same time, readers can also evaluate the relative importance of these articles by comparing the citation indexes of different articles.
However, citation index is not the only factor that determines the importance of an article. Some articles with high quality and low citation index may not be widely cited because of the small research field and limited audience. Therefore, when evaluating the importance of an article, besides referring to the citation index, other factors need to be considered, such as the quality, innovation and practicability of the article.