Measures reflecting the reach of an individual item, such as a journal article
Citation count: the number of times your article was cited by other articles in the database. Varies by database.
Where it can be found:
Times Cited: total number of times the article has been cited in publications indexed by WOS Core Collection
Cited By: total number of times the article has been cited
Also shows WOS citation count
Total Citations: total number of times the article has been cited in publications indexed by Dimensions
Total Citations: total number of times the article has been cited in publications indexed by PubMed
Need to enter PubMed identifiers (PMIDs) for the publications. PMIDs can be found by searching PubMed.
Normalized citation counts: the number of times your article was cited by other articles in the database, relative to other articles: in the field, of similar age, funded by the same organization, etc. Varies by database.
Where they can be found:
Field Citation Ratio (FCR): citation performance of an article relative to similarly-aged articles indexed by Dimensions in the subject area. An FCR > 1.0 indicates an article has a higher than average number of citations for its group.
Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): citation performance of an article relative to NIH-funded articles indexed by Dimensions in the subject area. An RCR > 1.0 indicates an article has a higher than average number of citations for its group.
- iCite
NIH Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): a citation-based measure of scientific influence of one or more articles, normalized to the cites/year received by NIH-funded papers in same field and year. An RCR of 1.0 has same number of cites/yr as average NIH-funded paper; an RCR of 2.0 has twice as many as average.
Alternative Metrics: count things such as number of times your article was tweeted about or covered in a news source or blog. They differ from the traditional metrics in a couple of ways: 1) they give more immediate feedback regarding the interest in an article; and 2) by quantifying its reach via popular news outlets and social media, they can reflect the impact the article is having beyond the academy. An article that hasn’t been out long enough to have received a high citation count might be getting a lot of attention in the popular press. Alternative metrics capture this information, giving you another way to document your impact.
Where they can be found:
- PIVOT
Measures reflecting a researcher’s body of work
H-index: the highest number of articles you have published that have at least that number of citations
E.g., an H-index of 12 means you have 12 articles which have each been cited at least 12 times
Database specific
Where it can be found:
Weighted NIH Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): the sum of RCRs for articles in a group, which weights the article count by their influence relative to NIH-funded papers. A Weighted RCR > the total number of publications indicates an influential set of articles.
Where it can be found:
- iCite
Need to enter PubMed identifiers (PMIDs) for all of the author's publications. PMIDs can be found by doing an author search in PubMed.
Speaks to the impact of the journal on the scholarly community
Journal Impact Factor (JIF, IF): a measure of the average number of citations to articles published in that journal over a specified time period. A proxy for the relative importance of a journal
Where it can be found:
Articles and resources
Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics
- Ten principles to guide research evaluation
- Twenty recommendations to guide UK research
Five arguments to persuade HE leaders to evaluate research responsibly
- International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Working Group
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