Sources for Metrics
Listing of Common Metrics
General Information:
Age-Weighted Citation Rate (AWCR)
FWCI (Field Weighted Citation Index)
SNIP (Source-Normalized Impact per Paper)
Level: Journal
Source: JCR (Journal Citation Reports) - not available through UTHSC
Description: Citations to articles from the most recent five full years, divided by the total number of articles from the most recent five full years. "How much is this journal being cited during the most recent five full years?"
Age-Weighted Citation Rate (AWCR)
Level: Author
Source: Publish or Perish
Description: The AWCR measures the average number of citations to an entire body of work, adjusted for the age of each individual paper. It was inspired by Bihui Jin's note The AR-index: complementing the h-index. The Publish or Perish implementation differs from Jin's definition in that we sum over all papers instead of only the h-core papers.
Level: Article / Work
Source: Altmetric (plugin and standalone explorer), Dimensions, Metrics Toolkit, PlumX (plugin as seen on Scopus and our Institutional Repository), ImpactStory
Description: The term "altmetrics" (alternative metrics) is used to describe approaches to measure the impact of scholarship by using social media tools and alternative sources of data to measure the importance of scholarly output, such as likes, Tweets, shares, downloads, and mentions in policy documents or news stories. Altmetrics offer a different means to understanding engagement with scholarly work, especially outside of academia. They may be a good option for early career researchers as they typically begin accumulating quicker than citations, however altmetrics vary considerably in their usefulness and reliability.
Learn more about Altmetrics: Altmetrics, A Manifesto; Leiden Madtrics
Level: Journal
Source: Eigenfactor.org
Description: The Eigenfactor score divided by the number of articles published in journal. "I know how impactful the journal as a whole is, but what about the average individual article in the journal?" Only includes information from 1997-2015.
Level: Author
Source: Must be calculated - locate your citation counts from a variety of sources, use a variety for best results (Scopus, Google Scholar, Dimensions, SciFinder, Publish or Perish, etc.)
Description: Modeled after the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). For an AIF of 15 in 2020: the total citations received 2018 and 2019 / number of articles published in 2018 and 2019 = 15.
To calculate: average number of citations from papers published in year t to papers of the journal X published in the two years preceding t (t - 1 and t - 2) (Pan and Fortunato, 2014)
Level: Article / Work
Source: Scopus, Dimensions, Google Scholar, SciFinder, Publish or Perish, Scite, etc.
Description: Citation counts are the most basic and fundamental bibliometric indicator and are used to calculate most other measures. Counts of citations by article or data set are widely available from a variety of sources. Counts will likely vary due to indexing differences between different sources and databases. A variation to a static citation count includes Field Weighted Citation Impact (Scopus). An advantage of citations is their ubiquity and ease, however they are slow to occur and may not always indicate positive engagement (see: The Citation Typing Ontology).
Level: Journal
Source: Scopus
Description: The number of citations received by a journal in the latest 4 years (including the calculation year), divided by the number of documents published in the journal in those four years. It is an average of citation behavior over a 4 year period.
Level: Journal
Source: Eigenfactor.org
Description: Measures the number of times articles published in the past 5 years from a particular journal have been cited in the year being evaluated. Similar to JIF in that it is essentially a ratio of numbers of citations to the total number of articles. However it also eliminates self citations and weights each reference. Only includes information from 1997-2015.
Level: Author
Source: Publish or Perish
Description: Publish or Perish also calculates the e-index as proposed by Chun-Ting Zhang in his paper The e-index, complementing the h-index for excess citations. The e-index is the (square root) of the surplus of citations in the h-set beyond h2, i.e., beyond the theoretical minimum required to obtain a h-index of 'h'. The aim of the e-index is to differentiate between scientists with similar h-indices but different citation patterns.
Level: Article
Source: Dimensions
Description: The Field Citation Ratio (FCR) indicates the relative citation performance of a publication when compared to similarly-aged articles in its subject area. A value of more than 1.0-1.5 indicates higher than average citation, when defined by FoR subject code, and publication year.
FWCI (Field Weighted Citation Index)
Level: Article / Work or Author
Source: Scopus
Description: As defined in Snowball Metrics, Recipe Book/Field-Weighted Citation Impact - Field-Weighted Citation Impact is the ratio of the total citations actually received by the denominator’s output, and the total citations that would be expected based on the average of the subject field. A Field-Weighted Citation Impact of:
Exactly 1 means that the output performs just as expected for the global average.
More than 1 means that the output is more cited than expected according to the global average. For example, 1.48 means 48% more cited than expected.
Less than 1 means that the output is cited less than expected according to the global average.
Level: Author
Source: Publish or Perish (software)
Description: The g-index is a variant of the h-index that places greater weight on highly cited articles. The g-index is always the same as or higher than the h-index. Proposed by Leo Egghe in his paper "Theory and Practice of the G-Index" in 2006.
A g-index of 20 means that an author has published at least 20 articles that combined received at least 400 citations total.
Level: Journal
Source: Google Scholar
Description: This metric is based on the articles published by a journal over 5 calendar years. h is the largest number of articles that have each been cited h times. A journal with an h5-index of 43 has published, within a 5-year period, 43 articles that each have 43 or more citations.
Level: Author
Source: Scopus author search, Google Scholar, Publons, Publish or Perish
Description: This is the number of papers (h) that have received at least h citations. An h of 15 means that an author has at least 15 publications that have been cited at least 15 times each. Please note that your h-index may vary depending on the source (coverage of journal titles, time span, etc.) For instance, h-indices derived from Google Scholar tend to be higher than those from Scopus. Learn more about the h-index here.
Level: Author
Source: Google Scholar
Description: Created by Google Scholar, this is the number of publications the researcher has written that have at least 10 citations.
Level: Journal
Source: CWTS Journal Indicators
Description: Also known as RIP (raw impact per publication), the IPP is used to calculate SNIP. IPP is number of current-year citations to papers from the previous 3 years, divided by the total number of papers in those 3 previous years.
Level: Journal
Source: JCR (Journal Citation Reports) - not available through UTHSC
Description: For the current Journal Citation Reports year, the median age of journal articles cited. "What is the duration of citation to articles in this journal?"
Level: Journal
Source: JCR (Journal Citation Reports) - not available through UTHSC; often available on individual journal websites
Description: The number of citations made in the current year to articles in the previous 2 years, divided by the total number of citable articles from the previous 2 years. You may often find a journal's IF on the journal homepage, however note that you may not be able to verify without access to JCR.
Level: Journal
Source: JCR (Journal Citation Reports) - not available through UTHSC
Description: Turns the Eigenfactor into a multiplier. A score of 2 is twice as good as a score of 1; a score of 20 is 4 times as good as a score of 5.
Level: Article / Work
Source: iCite (NIH), Dimensions
Description: The Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) indicates the relative citation performance of a publication when comparing its citation rate to that of other publications in its area of research. A value of more than 1.0 shows a citation rate above average. The article’s area of research is defined by the articles that have been cited alongside it.
Level: Journal
Description: This metric doesn't consider all citations of equal weight; the prestige of the citing journal is taken into account. Inspired by Google page rankings algorithm and the logic that "not all citations are created equally." Average number of weighted citations received in a year / number of documents in previous 3 years.
SNIP (Source-Normalized Impact per Paper)
Level: Journal
Source: Scopus
Description: SNIP weights citations based on the number of citations in a field. If there are fewer total citations in a research field, then citations are worth more in that field. Journal's citation count per paper / citation potential in subject field.
