Research Guides: Faculty Toolkit for Publishing: Article-Level Metrics

Article-Level Metrics

Article-level metrics measure the reach and impact of scholarly research at the article level through both traditional means of citation counts, as well as newer methods such as alternative metrics or "altmetrics." Since scholarly research is becoming increasingly disseminated due to the web, article-level metrics are more relevant to a digital environment.

Citation counts, which are assessed by counting the number of times a work has been cited by another work, can be found in a number of different resources, but those counts will likely vary due to indexing differences.

Where can I find citation counts?

Scopus

To find an article's citation count in Scopus, do the following:

Go to Scopus
Place a search for the title of an article
To the far right of the article, you'll see the number of times the article has been cited by other works in Scopus
- Click the number to view the other works citing the article
- For more in-depth analysis, click on Analyze search results at the top of the search results to analyze results by year, source, author, affiliation, etc.
If you click on the title of the original article, this will lead you to the document details page where you can view additional metrics, as well as set up an alert so Scopus will email you when another article indexed in Scopus cites that original article. Please note that you need to register for a free account in order to receive alerts.
Scopus also provides additional metrics related to the article, such as field-weighted citation impact, and citation benchmarking. In the Metrics box, click on View all metrics
You can also view Scopus' PlumX Metrics, an altmetrics tool. The metrics are divided into five categories: Usage, Captures, Mentions, Social Media and Citations.

Web of Science

To find an article's citation count in Web of Science, do the following:

Go to Web of Science
Place a search for the title of an article
To the far right of the article, you'll see the number of times the article has been cited by other works in Web of Science
- Click the number to view the other works citing the article
- For more in-depth analysis, click on Analyze Results to analyze results by a variety of categories
- You can also use Create Citation Report, which displays the number of citations back to the article by year, the average number of citations per year, etc.
If you click on the title of the original article, this will lead you to the article's details page where you can view the number of articles that cite the article and set a citation alert so Web of Science will email you when another work cites the original article. Please note that you need to register for a free account in order to receive alerts.

Google Scholar

To find an article's citation count in Google Scholar, do the following:

Go to Google Scholar
Place a search for the title of a work
Under the work's title, and below the abstract, if shown, click on the link for the number of times it's been cited
When you click on the Cited by link, Google Scholar will open a page displaying the results of those items that have cited the original work
The default setting for the results display is relevance, although it can be changed to sort by date

Altmetrics, which are meant to complement traditional citation metrics, not replace them, measure the real-time reach and influence of scholarly research based on their online interactions. For example, page views, downloads, shares, likes or mentions whether from social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter, major media sources, blogs, or research networking sites.

Where can I find altmetrics?

Research Databases

The following are a few databases that offer altmetrics on articles, if available, but there are other databases that may include them as well. On the item's details page, look for a button or a colored donut icon or links that read Metrics.