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Metrics in SciVal – what are they and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
Last updated on August 18, 2026
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With over 80 different metrics to choose from in SciVal, the question of "which metric should I use" can become a daunting task. This page gives an overview of the types of available metrics, along with links to view their strengths and weaknesses.
Select the appropriate metrics
The ideal situation, when making research management decisions, is to have three types of input: peer review, expert opinion, and information from a quantitative evidence-base.
When these complementary approaches ‘triangulate’ to give similar messages, you can have confidence that your decision is robust. Conflicting messages are a useful alert that further investigation is probably required.
In the same way that more than one peer review is usually requested, using multiple metrics will also ensure that any findings are as reliable as possible.
Be clear on the question you're asking
The aim of using data and metrics as input into decision-making is that any differences observed should reflect differences in performance. You should ensure that:
- The question that is being asked is clearly articulated
- You are aware of other factors, beyond performance, that can influence the value of a metric
These types of questions asked typically fall into three groups:
- Evaluation of performance, such as is conducted by a national body on its research institutions for the purposes of allocating national funding, or by a line manager to provide input into career development discussions. It is typically very important in these situations that variables besides differences in performance have been accounted for, to ensure that the assessment is fair. For example, it wouldn’t be advisable to compare chemistry and immunology using a metric that doesn’t consider the tendency for higher output and citation rates in immunology.
- Demonstration of excellence, such as that which supports an application for competitive funding, or for promotional purposes to attract students to a research institution. The aim in these situations is to find a way to showcase an entity.
- Scenario modelling, such as that which supports the decision of which academic to recruit to an existing research team, or a reorganization of a school. The importance of factors besides performance that affect the values of metrics may not be important, depending on the scenario that is being modelled.
Be aware of factors that affect metric value
There are six factors, besides performance, that may affect the value of a metric:
- Size
- Discipline
- Publication-type
- Database coverage
- Manipulation
- Time
The Metrics Guidebook and the Usage guidebook discusses each SciVal metric in detail. The guidebooks offer suggestions on how and when to apply each metric.
- Download the Usage Guidebookopens in new tab/window (PDF format)
Details of each metric, including links to a summary of each metric from the Metrics Guidebook is available below.
Find a metric and related information
Type a metric name below to see more information:
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Publications with both academic and corporate affiliations. | |
Citations per publication received by those publications with and without academic-corporate collaboration. | |
The Awarded Grants Value split evenly over its lifetime. | |
The volume of Grants awarded and available to be spent as seen from the Grant start date. | |
Total citations received by publications of the selected entities. | |
The average number of citations received per publication. | |
Publications that have received at least one citation. | |
Is the average number of citations received in a calendar year for a journal, by all items published in that journal in the preceding three years. | |
The count of Policy Bodies citing your entity. | |
The count of policy body countries citing your entity. | |
The count of Policy Documents citing your entity's Scholarly Output. | |
The expected number of citations for a specific type of Scholarly Output, from a specific subject discipline (or disciplines) for a specific year. Used as part of the FWCI calculation. | |
The normalized share of an entity's Scholarly Output cited in Policy documents, relative to the world average. | |
The ratio of citations received relative to the expected world average for the subject field, publication type and publication year. World FWCI is 1.0 | |
The ratio of views relative to the expected world average for the subject field, publication type and publication year. | |
The extent of international, national, and institutional co-authorship. | |
The average number of citations received by publications that have international, national or institutional co-authorship. | |
A measure of both the productivity and citation impact of an entity, based on the number of publications as well as the number of citations they have received. h5-index is h-index for the past 5 years. g-index emphasizes the most highly cited publications. m-index is h-index per year. | |
The middle FWCI value for an entity's publications (when listed highest to lowest by FWCI). | |
The number of distinct Countries represented by the publications citing a selected entity. | |
The number of publications of a selected entity that are highly cited, having reached a threshold of citations received. | |
The number of publications of a selected entity that are highly viewed, having reached a threshold of views received. | |
The count of patent citations received by the selected entity, i.e. Athena University has been cited 600 times by patents over the past 5 years. In practice this means that the 400 publications from Athena University have been cited 600 times by the 200 patents. | |
Average patent-citations received by 1,000 scholarly outputs published by the selected entity, i.e. divide the patent-citation counts by the total scholarly output of the university for that period and multiply by 1,000. So, if Athena University had published 10,000 publications in the 5-year period, their patent-citations per scholarly output would be (600/10,000) x 1,000 = 60 | |
The count of patents citing the scholarly output published by the selected entity, i.e. 200 patents have cited articles published by Athena University over the past 5 years. | |
This is the count of Patent Offices that contain Patents, that have cited the entity you are looking at. The maximum number for this metric is 43. | |
The total policy citations received by the Scholarly Output in SciVal. | |
The number of publications of a selected entity that have been published in the selected journal quartiles. | |
The number of publications of a selected entity that have been published in the world's top journals. | |
The share of an entity's publications in a subject area, relative to the global share of publications in the same subject area. | |
The number of publications of a selected entity. | |
The count of scholarly outputs published by the selected entity that have been cited in patents, i.e. 400 publications from Athena University have been cited by patents over the past 5 years. | |
The number of Scholarly Outputs that are cited in Policy documents. | |
The number of Scopus Sources in which a selected entity's publications have appeared. | |
Publications with both academic and non-academic affiliations (corporate, government, medical or other). | |
Citations per publication received by those publications with and without sector collaboration. | |
Measures the prestige of citations received by a journal and field-normalizes them. The methodology is similar to that of Google PageRank. The average SJR value for all journals in Scopus is 1.000. | |
Is a ratio between the “Raw Impact per Paper” compared to the expected Citations per Publication, of that journal's field. It's a field-normalized metric. The average SNIP value for all journals in Scopus is 1.000. | |
The number of Subject Areas in which a selected entity's publications have appeared. | |
Total views received by publications of the selected entities. | |
The average number of views per publication. | |
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings metrics | |
The final indicator calculated using the Normalized Total Citation Count (QS) and the number of Faculty at the institution. | |
The ratio of a country's papers in the faculty area to the most productive country in the faculty area, in relative terms. | |
An indicator of the strength and diversity of an institution's research network as determined by sustainable research partnerships with international higher education institutions. | |
The subset of an institution’s Scholarly Output, published with the Partners (QS). | |
The number of international countries/locations represented by the Partners (QS). | |
The arithmetic sum of Citation Count (QS) of each faculty area, normalized per faculty area and adjusted to an institution’s location (country). | |
The number of international universities higher education institutions having a sustained partnership (3 or more joint publications over the five-year ranking period) with the subject institution. | |
Institution's Scholarly Output excluding publications as per QS methodology. | |
The arithmetic sum of Citation Count (QS) of each QS faculty area. | |
The Sustainability Score is calculated with the Sustainability Rankings 2025 methodology and rebased on the list of universities ranked in the QS World University Rankings. It evaluates the impact of research being done across the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (QS). | |
The publications considered in the Sustainability Rankings are assigned to each SDGs using the Elsevier SDGs Query 2023 and makes up 23% of the Sustainability Score. | |
The number of citations to the Scholarly Output (QS) and excluding author-level self-citations. | |
The weighting adjustment for the given QS faculty area and institution’s location (country) shown for humanistic and scientific subjects. | |
The weighting adjustment for the given QS faculty area shown for humanistic and scientific subjects. | |
Times Higher Univeristy (THE) World University Rankings metrics | |
Based on Scholarly Output (THE) and makes 5.5% of the final Rankings score. | |
The number of publications considered in the THE World University Rankings. They need to meet specific conditions in terms of document type, publication year and sources. | |
The average of the Global Citations Score and Country Normalized Citations Score. It makes 15.0% of the final Rankings score. | |
Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) of the publications considered in the THE World University Rankings. It is distinct from the FWCI used elsewhere in SciVal in that it is based on a 5-year time window rather than a 4-year time window. | |
It is based on the normalized z-score of an eligible university's Global FWCI and Country-Normalized FWCI, where the FWCI of a university's publications is analyzed in terms of the number of standard deviations from the mean. | |
The rank percentile value of a research metric is intended to show the university's performance relative to the other universities participating in the ranking. | |
It is based on the 75th percentile of the Field-Weighted Citation Impact 5 Year (THE) and makes 5.0% of the final Rankings score. | |
It is based on the number of publications in the Top 10% output worldwide by FWCI and makes 5.0% of the final Rankings score. | |
The number of publications of a selected entity having reached the Top 10% threshold by FWCI 5 Year worldwide. | |
It is based on the entity's Scholarly Output (THE) where the importance of a publication is determined based on the importance of other papers citing it. It makes 5.0% of the final Rankings score. | |
It is based on the count of Scholarly Output (THE) that have being cited by patents and makes 2.0% of the final Rankings score. | |
The number of patents citing the Scholarly Output (THE) published by the selected entity. | |
The count of Scholarly Outputs (THE) published by the selected entity that have been cited in patents. | |
It is based on Scholarly Output (THE) involving international collaboration and makes 2.5% of the final Rankings score. | |
The number of publications considered in the THE World University Rankings that have more than 1 author, more than 1 institution and more than 1 country code. | |
Times Higher Univeristy (THE) Impact Rankings metrics | |
The number of patents from any source that cite research conducted by the university. | |
The number of citations from clinical guidance to a university's Scholarly Output. | |
Co-authorship with Low or Lower-middle Income Countries (THE Impact) | The proportion of a university's Scholarly Output where one or more co-author is associated with a university that is based in a low or lower-middle income country. |
The ratio of Number of female authors to the Total number of authors, where gender information is available, for a particular university. | |
The ratio of citations received relative to the expected world average for the subject, publication type and publication year considering 5-year time window. | |
The rank percentile value of a research metric is intended to show the university's performance relative to the other universities participating in the SDG ranking. | |
THE produces an overall ranking as well as individual rankings for each SDG | |
The final score of a university in the overall table obtained considering Top Scoring SDGs. | |
Publications in Top 10% Journal Percentiles by CiteScore (THE Impact) | The number of a university's publications that appear in the top 10% of journals according to the Citescore metric |
The score for each SDG obtained considering a different series of metric per SDG. | |
The number of publications related to the SDG. | |
The sum of abstract views and clicks on the link to view the full-text at the publisher's website. | |
U.S. News Best National University Rankings Metrics | |
Field-Weighted Citation Impact metric is the citation impact per paper, normalized for field, year of publication and type of publication. The metrics are extracted from SciVal based on Elsevier’s Scopus® data and are weighted at 1.25% of overall U.S. News Best National University Rankings score. | |
Citations per publication is the average number of citations received by an institutions’ publications, or the total citations divided by total publications. The metrics are extracted from SciVal, based on Elsevier’s Scopus® data and are weighted at 1.25% of overall U.S. News Best National University Rankings score. | |
The share of publications in the top 5% of the most cited journals by CiteScoreopens in new tab/window. The metrics are extracted from SciVal based on Elsevier’s Scopus® data and are weighted at 1% of overall U.S. News Best National University Rankings score. | |
The share of publications in the top 25% of the most cited journals by CiteScoreopens in new tab/window. The metrics are extracted from SciVal based on Elsevier’s Scopus® Data and are weighted at 0.5% of overall U.S. News Best National University Rankings score. | |
The number of publications considered in the U.S. News Best National University Rankings. They need to meet specific conditions in terms of document type, publication year and sources. | |
U.S. News Best Engineering Schools Metrics | |
Field-Weighted Citation Impact - 5 Year (U.S. News)opens in new tab/window | Fields weighted citation impact is citation impact per paper, normalized for each engineering field. The metrics are extracted from SciVal based on Elsevier’s Scopus® Data. It is weighted at 3% of overall U.S. News Best Engineering Schools score. |
Citations per publication is total citations divided by total number of publications at the engineering school. This is the average number of citations an engineering school's publications receives. The metrics are extracted from SciVal based on Elsevier’s Scopus® Data. It is weighted at 3% of overall U.S. News Best Engineering Schools score. | |
Publication Share in Top 5% Journals (U.S. News)opens in new tab/window | The share of publications cited in the top 5% of the most cited journals using CiteScoreopens in new tab/window. The metrics are extracted from SciVal based on Elsevier’s Scopus® Data. It is weighted at 2.5% of overall U.S. News Best Engineering Schools score. |
Publication Share in Top 5% Journals (U.S. News)opens in new tab/window | The share of publications cited in the top 25% of the most cited journals using CiteScoreopens in new tab/window. The metrics are extracted from SciVal based on Elsevier’s Scopus® Data. It is weighted at 1.5% of overall U.S. News Best Engineering Schools score. |
The number of publications considered in the U.S. News Best Engineering Schools. They need to meet specific conditions in terms of document type, publication year and sources. | |
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