Research Impact

Article metrics measure the research impact of an article or a number of articles produced by an author or an institution. However, no tool can cover all publications, which affects the accuracy of citation counts. Also, the main citation tools provide less coverage of non-journal publication formats, so researchers who are less dependent on journals to disseminate research findings will have a harder time finding metrics for their publications.

Article level research metrics can be retrieved from the following databases.

Web of Science is the original citation resource, which is composed of Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Science Citation Index Expanded.

The Citation Report in Web of Science provides citation statistics for a set of search results, including Sum of Times Cited with/without Self-Citations, Citing Articles with/without Self-citations, Average Citations per Item, etc. Authors can also set up citation alerts to receive updated citation information about their or other researchers' works.

Limitations:

• Only citations from the journals indexed in Web of Science are counted.
• Limited coverage of non-English titles.
• Limited coverage for some subject areas, including arts, humanities, business, etc.

Scopus is another citation resource for retrieving article level metrics.

The citation overview in Scopus includes how often documents were cited by articles indexed in Scopus and were viewed by Mendeley readers. Authors can also set up citation alerts to receive updated citation information about their own or other researchers' works.

Limitations:

• Only citations from the titles indexed in Scopus are counted.
• Limited year coverage for citation tracking (available for articles published from 1996 onwards). Scopus is in the process of expanding the timespan.
• Limited coverage for some subject areas, including arts, math, sociology, etc.

Google Scholar is a free citation resource. It counts citations from academic articles, theses, books, and other documents.

Search citations for individual articles from the homepage. Researchers with a Gmail account can set up a Google Scholar Profile in "My Citations." It keeps track of citations and retrieves author metrics (h-index, i10-index). "Metrics" leads to a summary of recent citations to many publications in broad and specific research areas, which can help authors decide where to publish.

Limitations: 

• Only citations from the titles indexed in Google Scholar are counted.
• There may be duplication of results.
• Coverage is primarily for English-language publications.