Article-level metrics attempt to quantify the reach and impact of each published research. Traditionally, this is done through counting the number of times an article is cited by other articles. New sources of data today allow researchers to measure the impact of their article through alternative measures like number of tweets, newspaper mentions, policy mentions, reviews etc. This page will focus on the traditional measures using citation counts.
Counting citations is the first step of citation-based research impact analysis. Various databases and citation indexes provide the number of times that a certain publication or author is cited by other works. Citation counts have often been used to extrapolate the quality, influence and transfer of research knowledge in academia - the assumption is that the more important or influential a work, the more frequently it will be cited.
However, while its use as a proxy for quality has merit, there are some limitations that everyone should take note:
The Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) measures how well cited a publication is compared to similar publications. It can be used to directly compare/benchmark the performance of an article other articles (even in different subject areas) because it is normalized. FWCI is a unique metric that is only available via Scopus/SciVal and is calculated based on publications indexed in Scopus after 1996. It is calculated by comparing the citations received by a publication against other similar publications over a 4 year period.
Similar publications are defined as those that:
This is how you would interpret the FWCI value:
Scopus is one of the databases that allows you to track citation counts of publications. These citation counts are derived based on the publications indexed in Scopus.
All you have to do is to search for a particular article either by title or keywords under Document Search
“Screenshot” from Scopus by Elsevier
You can easily find the citation counts from the 'Cited By' value in the document results page.
“Screenshot” from Scopus by Elsevier
Alternatively, the citation counts are also also available in the document details for each respective document indexed in Scopus.
“Screenshot” from Scopus by Elsevier
Click on 'View all metrics' to see more article related metrics.
Web of Science is also another commonly used database to find citation counts. The citation counts are derived from publications indexed in the Web of Science collection.
It is also incredibly easy to use! Head over to Web of Science and search for any article by title or keywords under Documents search.
“Screenshot” from Web of Science by Clarivate
Beside each document record at the search results page, you will be able to get the number of citations from the 'Times Cited:' value.
“Screenshot” from Web of Science by Clarivate
Similarly, the citation count is also available at each respective documents' page.
“Screenshot” from Web of Science by Clarivate
Google Scholar indexes all kinds of scholar publications that can be crawled on the internet.
To find the citation count for a particular article on Google Scholar, all you need to do is to search for a particular article, either by title or by keywords. You can find the citation count on Google Scholar under the 'Cited by' value for each record. This is calculated based on what is indexed by Google Scholar. Clicking on the 'Cited by' value will bring you to the links of the citing articles.
"Screenshot" from Google Scholar by Google
Field Weight Citation Impact, or FWCI, is a metric that is only available in Scopus/Scival databases. It is calculated based on publications indexed in Scopus from 1996 onwards.
To find the FWCI of an article, you may make use of Scopus and conduct a Document Search.
“Screenshot” from Scopus by Elsevier
Select the particular article that you are interested in to go to the document's detail page. You will need to click on 'View all metrics' to find the FWCI information of the article.
