Bibliometrics
Bibliometrics about researchers and publications can be tracked using a variety of different tools, including SciVal, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. A large number of these different metrics exist, and it is helpful to think of the different metrics in terms of whether they are relevant to describe the academic impact of the author, to describe the impact that your publication is having, or to describe the impact of a journal that your publication is featured in.
Author-level metrics
When describing your academic impact, some of these metrics may be helpful to show the reach you are having through your research.
| Metric | Source | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of publications/Scholarly output | SciVal/Scopus/Web of Science/Google Scholar | Shows the number of publications you have authored that are available on a particular database. |
| Citation count | SciVal/Scopus/Web of Science/Google Scholar | Shows the number of times your paper/s has been cited by others. |
| Citations per publication | SciVal/Scopus/Web of Science/Google Scholar | Indicates the average number of citations received by each publication. |
| Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) | SciVal/Scopus | Shows a paper’s performance relative to its peers. It is the ratio of the actual number of citations received by an output to date and the expected number for an article in a similar field. |
| % of International Collaboration | SciVal/Scopus | Shows the percentage of your publications that involve co-authors from a different country. |
| % of Academic-Corporate Collaboration | SciVal/Scopus | Shows the percentage of your publications that involve co-authors with industry partners. |
| Output in top citation percentiles | SciVal/Scopus | Indicates the extent to which an entity’s publications are present in the top 1%, 5%, 10% or 25% of the world’s most-cited publications. |
| Output in top journal percentiles | SciVal/Scopus | Indicates the extent to which your publications are present in the world’s most-cited journals. |
| h-index | Google Scholar | Shows that h number of the researcher’s most cited publications have received h number of citations e.g. a h-index of 13 shows that the researcher’s top 13 most-cited publications have each received at least 13 citations. |
Publication-level metrics
| Metric | Source | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Citation count | SciVal/Scopus/Web of Science/Google Scholar | Shows the number of times your paper has been cited by others. |
| Number of citing countries | SciVal/Scopus/Web of Science/Google Scholar | Shows the countries that your paper has been cited in. |
| Article views | SciVal/Scopus | Shows the number of times your paper has been viewed by others. |
| Downloads | CORA | Shows the number of times your paper has been downloaded by others. |
| Social media coverage | Twitter, Facebook, etc. and PlumX/Altmetric | Tracks the number of times a paper has been mentioned on different social media channels. |
| Blog posts | PlumX/Altmetric | Tracks the number of times your paper has been mentioned on different blogs. |
| News mentions | PlumX/Altmetric | Shows the numbers of times your paper has been mentioned in different news outlets, including newspapers, news channels. |
| Policy mentions | PlumX/Altmetric | Shows the number of policy documents that reference your paper. |
Journal-level metrics
| Metric | Source | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Journal Impact Factor (JIF) |
Web of Science | A measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times its articles are cited. |
| Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) | SciVal/Scopus | A ratio between the “Raw Impact per Paper”, a type of Citations per Publication calcu- lation, actually received by the journal, compared to the “Citation Potential”, or expected Citations per Publication, of that journal’s field. SNIP takes differences in disciplinary characteristics into account, and can be used to compare journals in different fields. The average SNIP value for all journals in Scopus is 1. |
| SCImago Journal Rank (SCJ) | SciVal/Scopus | Weights the value of a citation depending on the field, quality and reputation of the journal that the citation comes from, so that “all citations are not equal”. SJR also takes differences in the behavior of academics in different disciplines into account, and can be used to compare journals in different fields. The average SJR value for all journals in Scopus is 1. |
| CiteScore | SciVal/Scopus | Based on the number of citations to documents (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters and data papers) in a journal over four years, divided by the number of the same document types indexed in Scopus and published in the same four years by that journal. |