Used to demonstrate the impact of an individual research publication, usually by referencing citation based article level indicators or altmetrics.
Article-level metrics can help answer the following questions:
- How many times was an article cited?
- How does it compare to other similar papers? (above/below expected count for its discipline, age or publishing outlet)
- Is it in the top 0.1%, 1% or 5%, etc. in its discipline? (measure of excellence)
- Is it gaining citations at an unusually rapid rate? (measure of early impact)
- How it it tracking in social media? (possible indication of later citation performance)
Note on Citation Analysis
Citation analysis is a quantifiable measure of academic output. Users need to be aware of the limitations and incongruities of citation metrics. Library subscription databases and Google Scholar do not correct errors in citing papers. This means that one paper may be cited many different ways and appear as separate entries in these tools. Also, author and institutional naming inconsistencies complicate these analyses. Comparisons between these tools should be avoided. The databases use different sources to generate data and some are more comprehensive than others.
Citation counts indicate that other researchers have referred to your publication in their publications.
Citation counts can be tracked in a number of different resources but the key multidisciplinary databases. The citation count for each article tracked in these databases will more than likely differ across all three because each includes different publications in their databases.
Available in Web of Science, Scopus, or Google Scholar.
Citation benchmarking indicates how citations received by the document being viewed compare with the average for similar documents.
Scopus citation benchmarking takes into account the date of publication, the document type, and the disciplines associated with the item. Citation Benchmarking compares documents within an 18 month window and is computed separately for each of its sources’ disciplines.
In Web of Science, there are a few more steps to obtaining the baseline information. In the top navigation, look for Essential Science Indicators. Once in it, navigate to Field Baselines and Percentiles. Baselines are annualized expected citation rates for papers in a research field. Percentiles indicate how many citations it will take for a paper to be in the top 1%, 10%, 20%, 50% of papers in that field that year. For example, a 2017 material science article that received 18 citations would put that paper among the top 10% of papers published that year.
More information about Web of Science tools for author benchmarking can be found in Authors / Researchers: What is your impact? guide by Clarivate Analytics.
Available via Scopus, or Web of Science.
Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)
Field-Weighted Citation Impact score is available in Scopus indicates how the article’s citation count compares to similar articles in the same field and timeframe.
A value greater than 1.00 means the document is more cited than expected according to the average. It takes into account:
- The year of publication
- Document type, and
- Disciplines associated with its source.
The FWCI is the ratio of the document’s citations to the average number of citations received by all similar documents over a three-year window. Each discipline makes an equal contribution to the metric, which eliminates differences in researcher citation behavior.
Available via Scopus.
Altmetrics: Non-citation Based Article-Level Indicators
Altmetrics was coined as shorthand for alternative metrics and encompasses a diverse range of non-citation-based indicators for a digital item.
The signals can include downloads, views, likes, shares, social media mentions like blogs and twitter as well as software reuse. These metrics accumulate quicker than citation metrics and are indicative of reach beyond academia.
Available via Scopus (PlumX metrics), Altmetric.com, or via freely available ImpactStory.
Characteristics of Citing Articles
Often interesting information about the impact of a publication can be gleaned by analyzing characteristics of citing papers.
In Web of Science, from the bibliographic detail page, you can follow the “Times Cited” link to generate a list of citing documents. Then, run “Analyze Results” function for a wealth of information about publications citing your paper. You can understand geographic impact (countries, institutions and individuals citing your research), disciplinary impact (disciplinary mapping of papers citing your research) or range and impact of citing journals.
In SCOPUS, from article bibliographic detail page, follow the link to “view all citing documents”. From there, “Analyze Search Results” It provides a visual analysis of your results broken up into 7 categories (year, source, author, affiliation, country/territory, document type and subject area. Please visit the Scopus blog page on Analysis Tools for more information.