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Back to all metricsCitations per Publication in SciVal indicates the average citation impact of each of an entity’s publications: how many citations have this entity’s publications received on average?
Citations per Publication is a:
- Citation Impact metric
- Snowball Metric
SciVal often displays Citations per Publication in a chart or table with years. These years are always the years in which items were published, and do not refer to the years in which citations were received.
- Benchmark the average citation impact of publications within a body of work
- Compare the average influence of publications of entities of different sizes, but in related disciplines, such as research teams working in a similar field of research, or a Researcher and Publication Sets belonging to that Researcher
- Showcase the performance of entities that have published a few notably highly cited papers that will have a positive effect on the average of the entire data set
- Benchmarking the average influence of the publications of entities with distinct disciplinary profiles, such as Institutions with sizeable humanities schools with Institutions without humanities schools
- 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 account for disciplinary differences.
- 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 use Cited Publications to investigate the proportion of publications in a data set that have been cited.
- 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 items citing the publications that are indexed.
- The only way to account for this is to be vigilant. Consider also limiting the use of Citations per Publication 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.
- Entities are small so that the metric may fluctuate significantly and appear unstable over time, even when there is complete Scopus coverage. Citations per Publication calculates an average value, and these types of calculations are strongly influenced by outlying publications in a small data set.
- There is a concern that excessive self-citations may be artificially inflating Citations per Publication. Users can judge whether the level of self-citations is higher than expected 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. It is advised to use metrics like Scopus Source Title Count or Collaboration to account for this.
- The person who will use the data does not like to see a line that “dips” in recent years. This typically happens with Citations per Publication because recent publications have had little time to receive citations. Users are advised to use Field-Weighted Citation Impact to avoid this drop, if it is of concern.
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact opens in new tab/windowis a logical complement to Citations per Publication, considering behavioral differences 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 display of the “dip” in recent years due to little time having passed to receive citations since publication
- Cited Publicationsopens in new tab/window, which provides a measure of the reliability that an entity’s publications will subsequently be used to support other research, but that is not affected by a high number of citations received by 1 or a few publications
- Collaboration Impact opens in new tab/windowand Academic-Corporate Collaboration Impact opens in new tab/windowalso measure Citations per Publication, and are a complement. They focus on subsets of publications within a data set with collaboration characteristics.
- The set of “time-independent metrics” that 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
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