SciVal Metric: Citation Count

Benchmark the visibility of entities of similar size, and that fall into similar disciplines, such as multidisciplinary institutions with a similar number of research staff, or international collaboration networks in similar disciplines

Provide impressive figures to showcase the performance of entities that are large in comparison to a group of peers, when this metric is likely to give high numbers

Showcase the performance of entities that have published a few noticeably highly cited papers

Benchmarking the visibility of entities of obviously different sizes, when this “Power Metric” will most closely reflect entity size rather than differences in visibility; a Group of Institutions such as a US state will generally have a higher Citation Count than an individual institution, for example. Users are advised to use the size-normalized Citation Impact metrics Citations per Publication or Field-Weighted Citation Impact to compare the visibility of entities of different sizes.

Benchmarking the collaboration of entities with distinct disciplinary profiles:

• Academics working in medical sciences and in virology, for instance, tend to publish and cite with high frequencies, whereas those working in business schools or in linguistics tend to publish and cite with lower frequencies.
• It is not advisable to use this metric to compare entities in distinct disciplines without accounting for these differences.
• When comparing entities made up of a mixture of disciplines, such as an Institution or a Country, it is advised to apply the Research Area filter to focus on one field that is common between all the entities, or to select Field-Weighted Citation Impact which will take this into account.

Investigating the reliability with which an entity’s publications are cited, since one or a few publications with a very high number of citations can conceal a sizeable body of uncited material. Users are advised to select Cited Publications to give an idea of reliability.

Entities are small and there may be gaps in their output within the Scopus coverage:

• A single missing publication from a small data set may have a significant negative impact on apparent visibility. For example, an academic’s performance may suffer due to gaps in items they have published, as well as gaps in publications citing the publications that are indexed.
• The only way to account for this is to be vigilant. Consider also limiting the use of Citation Count to comparing larger data sets in the same discipline in which potential gaps in the database coverage likely have a similar effect on all entities being viewed and do not invalidate the comparison.

There is a concern that excessive self-citations may be artificially inflating the number of citations. Users can judge whether the level of self-citations is higher than normal by deselecting the “Include self-citations” option.

Uncovering the performance of publications in the very early stages of a new strategy, or of early- career researchers, where the short time that has passed since publication will reduce the reliability of basing decisions on citation information. Users are advised to use metrics such as Scholarly Output or Collaboration in these situations.

The person who will use the data does not like to see a line that “dips” in recent years. This typically happens with Citation Count because recent publications have had little time to receive citations. Users are advised to use Field-Weighted Citation Impact or Publications in Top Journal Percentiles to avoid this drop, if it is of concern.

Citations per Publication opens in new tab/windowand Field-Weighted Citation Impactopens in new tab/window, which bring complementary perspectives into view on total visibility, and also account for differences in the size of entities being compared. Field-Weighted Citation Impact also accounts for differences in publication and citation behavior between disciplines.

Field-Weighted Citation Impactopens in new tab/window, Outputs in Top Citation Percentilesopens in new tab/window, and Publications in Top Journal Percentiles opens in new tab/windowavoid the “dip” in recent years due to little time having passed to receive citations since publication

Cited Publications opens in new tab/windowprovides a measure of the reliability that an entity’s publications will subsequently be cited, and is not affected by a high number of citations received by 1 or a few publications

h-indicesopens in new tab/window, whose values depend on a combination of Citation Count together with Scholarly Output, and are logical partner metrics

The set of all other “Power Metrics” whose value tends to increase as the entity becomes bigger: Scholarly Output, Subject Area Count, Scopus Source Title Count, Cited Publications (“Total value”), Number of Citing Countries, Collaboration (“Total value”), Academic Corporate Collaboration (“Total value”), Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles (“Total value”), Publications in Top Journal Percentiles (“Total value”), and h-indices

The set of “time-independent metrics”, which provide useful, reliable information immediately upon publication and do not rely on the passing of time for useful data to accumulate: Scholarly Output, Subject Area Count, Scopus Source Title Count, Collaboration, Academic Corporate Collaboration, and Publications in Top Journal Percentiles