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Research Impact: Citations and Metrics

This guide outlines tools and strategies to help you discover the impact of your research.

Publication Metrics

Publication metrics demonstrate the impact your research is having in:

  • traditional scholarly sources such as journals, articles and books, often using citation counts
  • non-traditional (alternative) sources including policy documents, presentations, software and social media outputs which can be used to augment traditional metrics.

Below are some examples of metrics that demonstrate impact in journals, articles and books as well as alternative metrics.

Journal Metrics

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is calculated from data indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and measures the number of times a journal article has been cited in a particular year. The impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) year by the total number of articles published in the previous two years.

Journal Citation Reports allows you to evaluate and compare journals in the same research area but should be used with careful attention to all of the factors that influence citation rates, such as publication volume and citations characteristics of the type of journal and the subject area. The Journal Impact Factor can be used to complement expert opinion and informed peer review.

Note: Clarivate has introduced some changes to the 2024 Journal Impact Factor rankings to increase transparency and inclusivity.

Find a Journal Impact Factor

To find a journal's Impact Factor:

  1. Access Journal Citation Reports.
  2. Search for a journal by title, abbreviation, ISSN/eISSN, category, publisher or country/region and select the relevant title from the list of suggestions:

  1. Scroll to locate the Journal Impact Factor:

The Journal Normalized Citation Impact (JNCI) is calculated from data indexed in the Web of Science and "is the ratio of the actual number of citing items to the average citation rate of publications in the same journal in the same year and with the same document type" (Clarivate, 2021).

The JNCI normalises the journal's citation rate and provides context for the performance of a journal relative to how other researchers perform when they publish in the same journal.

Clarivate. (2021). Normalized Indicators. https://incites.help.clarivate.com/Content/Indicators-Handbook/ih-normalized-indicators.htm?Highlight=Category%20Normalized%20Citation%20Impact%20#Journal

Find a Journal Normalized Citation Impact

  1. Log in to Incites (Clarivate) using your Web of Science, EndNote Online or ResearcherID account details.
  2. Select 'Explore reports':

  1. From the drop down menu at the top of the screen, select 'Show me an overview report about: Report Type > Researcher' (or Organisation or Publisher if that is the data you are looking for) and click 'Go':

  1. Search by WoS Author Record, Unique ID Search, Web of Science ResearcherID or ORCID:

  1. Scroll to the Production section to find the box labelled 'Journal Normalized Citation Impact by Journal' and view the journals in which the research is being published.
  2. Select the ellipsis (3 horizontal dots) and click on 'Save to report' to save the details or 'Go to analysis' (or alternatively select View data at the bottom of the box) to see a detailed breakdown of the publications, their rank, the number of Web of Science documents, the number of times cited and the JNCI of each title:

  1. The 'Journal Normalized Citation Impact by Journal' information can be viewed as a Table or visually as a graph by selecting the preferred option at the top of the screen:

The Eigenfactor measures the importance and influence of a journal within the scientific community. It considers both the number and the source of the citations so the higher the impact of journal in a particular field and the more citations it has, the higher the Eigenfactor.

Eigenfactor.org provides the Eigenfactor score for every journal in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database.

Find an Eigenfactor

  1. Access Journal Citation Reports.
  2. Search for a journal by title, abbreviation, ISSN/eISSN, category, publisher or country/region and select the relevant title from the list of suggestions:
  1. Scroll to locate the Eigenfactor:
 

The CiteScore uses data from the Scopus database and measures the citation impact of peer-reviewed publications (articles, reviews, conference papers, data papers and book chapters) by counting the citations received over a 4 year period and dividing that number by the total number of publications in the same period.

Find a CiteScore

  1. Access CiteScore.
  2. Under Sources, select Subject area, Title, Publisher or ISSN and enter relevant search terms:

  1. The CiteScore is available next to each title:

The SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) utilises Scopus data and measures the prestige of a scholarly journal based on the number of citations it receives and the reputation of the journals in which the citations appear.

As the SJR is an average citation rate with citations weighted according to the citation strength of the citing journal, it should not be used to compare journals across different subject areas.

Find an SJR

  1. Access SJR.
  2. Enter the journal title into the search bar:

  1. Locate the title in the list of search results and click to select it:

  1. Scroll to locate the SJR:

  1. Click on the grid symbol on the top right of the box for a breakdown by year:

The Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) uses Scopus data and "measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field" (Elsevier, 2024). This measure allows for comparisons across subject areas with weighting applied based on the propensity to cite those journals.

The SNIP is measured by taking a journal’s citation count per paper and dividing it by the citation potential in its subject field.

Elsevier. (2024). Scopus LibGuide: Metrics. https://elsevier.libguides.com/Scopus/metrics

Find a SNIP

  1. Access Scopus.
  2. Click on the Sources option located on the right of the screen:

  1. Under Sources, select Subject area, Title, Publisher or ISSN and enter relevant search terms:

  1. Locate a journal of interest and click the title to view its data. The SNIP is located on the right of the screen.

Article metrics

In Web of Science you can find article citation counts on the search results page and sort by the number of times cited:

Click on the number of citations on the right of the screen to discover who has cited a particular publication:

In Scopus, you can find article citation counts on the search results page and sort by the number of times cited:

Click on the number of citations on the right of the screen to discover who has cited a particular publication:

In ProQuest you can find article citation counts on the search results page under the reference details.

Click on Times cited to discover who has cited the publication in the Web of Science database:

In Google Scholar you can find article citation counts on the search results page underneath the reference details.

Click on Cited by to discover who has cited the publication:

Book Metrics

Book metrics are not as readily available as article metrics, however you can find citation counts in several databases including:

Other indicators of book impact can include:

  • Australian and international library holdings. Search Trove for resources held in Australian libraries, museums, galleries, government and community organisations and WorldCat for resources held in libraries worldwide.
  • Book reviews. Find these in sources including Google Books, ProQuest and Web of Science.
  • Sales figures
  • Usage
  • Prizes, awards and honours received
  • Editions and translations
  • Works published by quality publishers
  • Citations in policy documents
  • Media mentions (altmetrics)

Alternative Metrics

Alternative metrics (Altmetrics) measure the number of times research outputs have been shared, mentioned or downloaded from online sources such as blogs, social media sites and policy documents.

Altmetrics are:

  • a record of attention indicating how many people have engaged with a scholarly output in the news, blogs and other social media sites like Twitter
  • a measure of dissemination to assist in understanding where and why research is being discussed or shared such as in the news or on blogs
  • an indicator of influence and impact in public policy documents for example which indicates that research is changing a field of study or having other effects on society.

Advantages of Altmetrics compared to citation-based metrics:

  • sourced from the Web rather than from journals and books, altmetrics are quicker to accumulate than citation-based metrics and can be collated as soon as publication occurs
  • complementary to citation-based metrics, they can capture more diverse impacts and assist in understanding the different kinds of influence that research can have
  • applied to a broader range of outputs such as tweets, data, software and presentations, the research is shared widely online and use is easy to track.

Altmetric Explorer

Access your altmetric data through Altmetric Explorer.

Create an account and then browse by author or department, or search for specific research outputs.

The following video describes what Altmetrics are and how to use them.

Altmetric.com. (2021, July 5). What are altmetrics? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHhKZkbDys