Research Impact

Research impact is generally the effect of research on society, economy, and culture outside of academia. Despite the difficulty of accurately measuring research impact in a broader context, some quantitative measurements based on citation metrics are commonly used by academia as an indicator of the impact of research.

Citation metrics are useful to researchers for identifying key publications and authors. Also, these metrics can be used to track the impact of articles, journals, and authors.

Usually, an article's impact is measured by how many times it has been cited.

WEB OF SCIENCE

CitationsThe Times Cited count is the number of articles in the database that cite the current article.

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Web of Science Usage Count
The Usage Count is a measure of the level of interest in a specific item on the Web of Science platform. The count reflects the number of times the article has met a user’s information needs as demonstrated by clicking links to the full-length article at the publisher’s website (via direct link or Open-Url) or by saving the article for use in a bibliographic management tool (via direct export or in a format to be imported later). The Usage Count is a record of all activity performed by all Web of Science users, not just activity performed by users at your institution. Usage Counts for different versions of the same item on the Web of Science platform are unified. Usage Counts are updated daily.

Last 180 days. This is the count of the number of times the full text of a record has been accessed or a record has been saved in the last 180 days. This count can move up or down as the end date of the fixed period advances.

Since 2013. This is the count of the number of times the full text of a record has been accessed or a record has been saved since February 1, 2013. This count can increase or remain static over time.

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SCOPUS

Scopus article metrics can be seen on the article page. Some metrics are displayed above the abstract. More metrics can be seen after clicking the link View more metrics. In the metrics section it is possible to move on to the article metrics page.

Citations
Total number of times this document has been cited in Scopus.

Citations benchmarking
This metrics shows how citations received by this document compare with the average for documents in the same publication year, normalized by subject area. The 99th percentile is high, and indicates a document in the top 1% globally.

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Field-Weighted citation impact (FWCI)
Field-Weighted Citation Impact shows how well cited this document is when compared to similar documents. A value greater than 1.00 means the document is more cited than expected according to the average.

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Views Count
The Views Count is the sum of abstract views and clicks on the full-text link at the publisher website.

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PlumX Metrics
PlumX Metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment. Plum Metrix dives the data into five categories:

• Citations – This is a category that contains both traditional citation indexes such as Scopus, as well as citations that help indicate societal impact such as Clinical or Policy Citations.
  Examples: citation indexes, patent citations, clinical citations, policy citations 

• Usage – A way to signal if anyone is reading the articles or otherwise using the research. Usage is the number one statistic researchers want to know after citations.
  Examples: clicks, downloads, views, library holdings, video plays

• Captures – Indicates that someone wants to come back to the work. Captures can be an leading indicator of future citations.
  Examples: bookmarks, code forks, favorites, readers, watchers 

• Mentions – Measurement of activities such as news articles or blog posts about research. Mentions is a way to tell that people are truly engaging with the research.
  Examples: blog posts, comments, reviews, Wikipedia references, news media 

• Social media -This category includes the tweets, Facebook likes, etc. that reference the research. Social Media can help measure “buzz” and attention.  Social media can also be a good measure of how well a particular piece of research has been promoted. Examples: shares, likes, comments, tweets

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GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Cited by shows how many times the article has been cited. When clicking on the link Cited by it is possible to see the publications that cite this article.

 

Journal metrics can be found in databases like and each database has its own metrics. In general, all these metrics are based on citations, but the citation period considered is different.

WEB OF SCIENCE

There are three options to view journal metrics. The first option is to look for a journal using the documents search. The second option is to use Journal Citation Reports. The third option is also in the products menu. It is InCites Benchmarking & Analytics. You can findthem both in the products menu. The metrics for the previous year are updated once a year in Spring.

Journal Impact Factor
The journal impact factore reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal. JIF metrics are available to journals in only two indexes (Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Science Citation Index). Journals are also ranked by their impact factor values in each category the journals have been indexed.

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Journal Citation Indicator
Journal Citation Indicators (JCI) was added to journal metrcs in the 2021. The JCI calculation is based on citations in the three previous years. The Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) is displayed for journals in all four indexes. The journals are also ranked by their JCI value.

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Rank by Journal Impact Factor
The journal rank percentiles and quartiles are calculated for each category based on their journal impact factor values. The quartiles have been divided as follows:

• the 75th percentile gridline marks the lower boundary of the top quartile journal rank;

• the 50th percentile gridline marks the lower boundary of the second quartile journal rank;

• the 25th percentile gridline marks the lower boundary of the third quartile;

• journals with a percentile rank below 25% are in the bottom quartile in that category.

As the impact factor is only displayed in two indexes, the ranks based on it are also displayed in the same two indexes.

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Rank by Journal Citation Indicator
Journals are also ranked by their Journal Citation Indicator values. The rank percentiles and quartiles are calculated for each category.

Journal Citation Indicator values and ranks are displayed in all four indexes.

5-Year Impact Factor
The 5-year journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the last year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the last year by the total number of articles published in the five previous years.

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Cited Half-life
Median age of the articles that were cited in the JCR year.

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Citing Half-life
Median age of articles cited by the journal in the JCR year.

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Eigenfactor Score
The Eigenfactor Score calculation is based on the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the last year, but it also considers which journals have contributed these citations so that highly cited journals will influence the network more than lesser cited journals. References from one article in a journal to another article from the same journal are removed, so that Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by journal self-citation.

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SCOPUS

Scopus Sources offers free journal rankings and metrics to non-subscribers.

CiteScore
CiteScore measures average citations received per document published in the serial. Calculating the CiteScore is based on the number of citations to documents (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and data papers) by a journal over four years, divided by the number of the same document types indexed in Scopus and published in those same four years. Articles-in-press are indexed in Scopus for some publishers, but are not included in the CiteScore calculation.

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CiteScore Tracker
CiteScore Tracker is calculated in the same way as CiteScore, but for the current year rather than previous, complete years. CiteScore Tracker is not based on a rolling 12-month window. The CiteScore Tracker calculation is updated every month, as a current indication of a title's performance. The metric values are fixed around springtime, then the Tracker is calculated for the subsequent year. For example, CiteScore Tracker 2022 will be complete and fixed around Spring 2023, when CiteScore Tracker 2023 will start to be displayed in Scopus.

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CiteScore Rank
The Rank is the source's CiteScore ranking placement when compared to other sources in that same category.. A journal can belong to more than one category in Scopus and have different ranks in these categories.

CiteScore Percentile
Percentile indicates the relative standing of a source in its subject field. Each subject field is divided into 100 equal-sized percentiles based on the number of sources, and a source is assigned to a percentile based on its CiteScore. A source that has a CiteScore Percentile of 96% is ranked according to CiteScore as high or higher than 96% of sources in that category.

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Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)
SNIP is the ratio of a source's average citation count per paper and the average number of references per document citing that source. The calculation is based on the citations of three years. SNIP takes into account characteristics of the source's subject field, which is the set of documents citing that source. Journals are divided to quartiles by their SNIP values in SciVal.

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SCImago Journal Rank
Read more at SJR

SCImago

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is a metric that ranks scientific journals based on their prestige and influence. The idea is to assign weights to bibliographic citations based on the importance of the journals that issued them. Citations issued by more important journals will be more valuable than those issued by less important ones. SJR includes citations from three years.

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H-index

The h index expresses the journal's number of articles (h) that have received at least h citations.

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GOOGLE SCHOLAR

The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. For example, a publication with five articles cited by, respectively, 17, 9, 6, 3, and 2, has the h-index of 3.

The h-core of a publication is a set of top cited h articles from the publication. These are the articles that the h-index is based on. For example, the publication above has the h-core with three articles, those cited by 17, 9, and 6.

The h-median of a publication is the median of the citation counts in its h-core. For example, the h-median of the publication above is 9. The h-median is a measure of the distribution of citations to the articles in the h-core.

Finally, the h5-index, h5-core, and h5-median of a publication are, respectively, the h-index, h-core, and h-median of only those of its articles that were published in the last five complete calendar years.

Google Scholar displays the h5-index and the h5-median for each included publication. Google Scholar also displays an entire h5-core of its articles, along with their citation counts, so that you can see which articles contribute to the h5-index. Click on the citation count for any article in the h5-core to see who cited it.

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