Research metrics
quick reference

Metrics illuminate the impact of your research outputs.
Promotion and tenure committees, funders, advisors,research team leaders and potential collaborators are allinterested in information about impact.
But where to start?
Your library can advise you on metrics that can help you to:

Decide whereto publish

Update youronline profile

Enrich promotion& tenure portfolio

Apply/ report
to funders1

Benchmark a collection ofresearch outputs ( for team leaders)• CiteScore• h-index• h-index• Percentile benchmark• Percentile benchmark• SJR: SCImago Journal Rank

• Percentile benchmark• Percentile benchmark• Journal metrics (e.g., CiteScore)• Field-Weighted Citation Impact• SNIP: Source Normalized
Impact per Paper• Usage• Usage• Usage• h-index (if in the same field)• Journal Impact Factor• Captures• Captures• Captures• Field-Weighted Download Impact 2• Mentions• Mentions• Mentions• Social media• Social media• Social media• Citations• Citations

Document*Author

JournalPlumX metrics

Citation countDocument countField-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)# of citations accrued since publication# of items published by an individual or group of individuals

A simple measure of attention for an article, journal orresearcher. As with all citation-based measures, it is important
to be aware of citation practices. Citation counts can include
measures of societal impact, such as patent, policy andclinical citations. “Effective Strategies for Increasing Citation
Frequency”3 lists 33 different ways to increase citations.

A researcher using document count should also provide a listof document titles with links. If authors use an ORCID iD—apersistent scholarly identifier—they can draw on numerous
sources for document count including Scopus, ResearcherID,
CrossRef and PubMed.

# of citations received by a document
expected # of citations for similar documents

h-index

Citescore

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)# of articles in the collection (h) that have received
at least (h) citations over the whole period

citations to documents published in 4-year period# of documents in same 4-year period

average # of weighted citations received in a year
# of documents published in previous 3 years

For example, an h-index of 8 means that 8 of the collection’s
articles have each received at least 8 citations. h-index is not
skewed by a single highly cited paper, nor by a large number ofpoorly cited documents. This flexible measure can be applied
to any collection of citable documents. Related h-type indicesemphasize other factors, such as newness or citing outputs’ own
citation counts.4

This comprehensive, current and open metric for journal citationimpact is available in a free layer of Scopus.com. It includes ayearly release and monthly CiteScore Tracker updates.

Citations are weighted—worth more or less—dependingon the source they come from. The subject field, quality andreputation of the journal have a direct effect on the valueof a citation. Can be applied to journals, book series andconference proceedings.

Source Normalized Impact Per
Paper (SNIP)

Journal Impact Factor

Percentile benchmark (articles)

citations in a year to documents published in previous 2 years# of citable items in previous 2 years

compares items of same age, subject area & document
type over an 18-month window

Based on Web of Science data, this metric is updated once ayear and traditionally released in June following the year ofcoverage as part of the Journal Citation Reports®. JCR also
includes a Five-year Impact Factor.

The higher the percentile benchmark, the better. This isavailable in Scopus for citations, and also for Mendeley
readership and tweets. Particularly useful for authors asa way to contextualize citation counts for journal articles
as an indicator of academic impact.

Outputs in top percentiles

UsageCaptures

extent to which a research entity’s documents are present
in the most-cited percentiles of a data universe# of downloads, clicks, views, library holdings, video plays# of bookmarks, code forks, favorites, readers, watchers

Signals if anyone is reading the documents or otherwise using
the research. See plumanalytics.com/learn/about-metrics/
usage-metrics/

Indicates that someone wants to come back to the work.
Captures can be a leading indicator of future citations. See
plumanalytics.com/learn/about-metrics/capture-metrics/

journal’s citation count per paper
citation potential in its subject field
The impact of a single citation will have a higher value in subject
areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa. Stability
intervals indicate the reliability of the score. Smaller journals
tend to have wider stability intervals than larger journals.

Similar documents are ones in the same discipline, of the same
type (e.g., article, letter, review) and of the same age. An FWCIof 1 means that the output performs just as expected against theglobal average. More than 1 means that the output is more citedthan expected according to the global average; for example,
1.48 means 48% more cited than expected.

Register for an ORCID iD at orcid.org

CiteScore calculations include citations from articles, reviews,
conference papers, book chapters and data papers. See
www.scopus.com/sources

Calculated by SCImago Lab (www.scimagojr.com) based on Scopus data.

Calculated by CWTS (www.journalindicators.com) based on Scopus data.

Found within SciVal, outputs in top percentiles can be fieldweighted. It indicates how many articles are in the top 1%,5%, 10% or 25% of the most cited documents. Quick way tobenchmark groups of researchers.

Mentions

Social media# of blog posts, comments, reviews, Wikipedia references,
news media# of shares, likes, comments, tweets, ratings

Show how people are interacting with the research, andwhether the research is gaining attention both within
academic networks and in broader forums. See plumanalytics.
com/learn/about-metrics/capture-metrics/

Social media can help measure “buzz” and attention. Social
media can also be a good measure of how well a particular pieceof research has been promoted. See plumanalytics.com/learn/
about-metrics/capture-metrics/* “Document” in the definitions refers to primary document types such as journal
articles, books and conference papers.
1. Metrics selected will depend on the funders’ interests and project strengths.
2. Plume, A. & Kamalski, J. (March 2014). “Article downloads: An alternative indicatorof national research impact and cross-sector knowledge exchange,” Research Trends,
www.researchtrends.com/issue-36-march-2014/article-downloads/
3. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2344585
4. See a good explanation at www.harzing.com/pop_hindex.htm

Visit elsevier.com/librarians for more resources to support your library.
Developed in partnership with Jenny Delasalle, freelance librarian & consultant
is a source-neutral abstract and citation
database curated by independent subject matter
experts with content from over 5,000 publishers
www.scopus.com
CiteScoreTM, SNIP and SJR are provided free at:www.scopus.com/sources

offers data-based insights into more than 18,000
research institutions and 231 nations worldwide tovisualize research performance, benchmark relative topeers, develop collaborative partnerships and analyze
research trends. www.scival.com@JennyDelasalle

is a free reference manager andacademic social network where you can organize yourresearch, collaborate with others online and discover
the latest research. www.mendeley.com

provide insights into the ways people interact
with individual pieces of research output (articles,
conference proceedings, book chapters, and manymore) in the online environment. plumanalytics.com/
learn/about-metrics/

Elsevier, Scopus, SciVal, Mendeley, Pure and other Elsevier trademarks are the property of Elsevier B.V. and its affiliates. Other trademarks, including the SNIP and SJR icons, are the property of their respective owners.