SciVal Metric: Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)

SciVal Metric: Scholarly Output

SciVal Metric: What is the Median Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)?

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...

Metrics in SciVal – what are they and what are their strengths and weaknesses?

SciVal Metric: Citation Count

SciVal Metric: h-indices

SciVal Metric: Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles

SciVal Metric: Citations per Publication

SciVal Metric: Publications in Top Journal Percentiles

    Back to all metricsGeographical collaboration in SciVal indicates the extent to which an entity’s publications have international, national, or institutional co-authorship, and single authorship. This...

SciVal Metric: Geographical collaboration

The metrics given for a researcher or author in SciVal may look different to those found in Scopus for several reasons:The year range you are looking at in SciVal is not the same as in ScopusIn the Explore...

Why do the researcher metrics look different to those in Scopus?

We have expanded SciVal from being a purely evaluative and analytical tool to being an integral part of your research planning process. You can run a complete portfolio analysis to see which Topics your...

SciVal Topics FAQs

Research Areas can be defined or chosen from a predefined list. You can also find below search tips when you create a Research Area.

SciVal gives you the flexibility to model, evaluate and benchmark any...

How do I work with Research Areas?

CiteScore is a simple way of measuring the citation impact of sources, such as journals.

Below you will find the answers to most commonly asked questions about CiteScore.


	What is the CiteScore methodology?

	
	Calculating...

CiteScore FAQs

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Calculating a Topic’s Prominence combines 3 metrics to indicate the momentum of the Topic:


	Citation Count in year n to papers published in n and n-1
	Scopus Views Count in year...

What is prominence?

The Reporting section in SciVal allows you to create rich reports specifically tailored to support your institution's distinct research strategy. Select entities, metrics and options in all modules to...

The Reporting section

SciVal Metric: CiteScore

Entities can be defined, editied, tagged, imported, exported, and shared.

What are entities?

An entity is anything that can be viewed in SciVal in terms of academic performance.


	Researchers / groups...

How do I work with entities?

SciVal Metric: SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

A Topic is a collection of documents with a common intellectual interest in SciVal that represent fields of research.Topics are multidisciplinary and researchers work in various research areas, contributing...

What are Topics?

 Important update to Open Access data in SciValKeeping Open Access information accurate in ScopusUpdate - 14th November 2025:OpenAlex is making another big data push to deal with bugs and a new code fix....

Open Access documents and filters in SciVal

This FAQ provides a quick overview of how the navigation in SciVal is structured to help you get started.SciVal's navigation at a glance:Explore: The Explore section allows you to select and analyze one...

Introduction to navigating SciVal

A number of quality metrics are available in SciVal to demonstrate research excellence at your institution.

Use highly cited publications and publications in leading Scopus sources. Two metrics often...

How can my institution demonstrate research excellence?

We strive to fully support the latest full versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.The following browser versions were tested for the current SciVal release:Chrome...

What are SciVal's technical requirements?

Compare (all metrics) lets you easily evaluate your research performance in comparison to others in your region, country and the world.You can choose from a broad range of metrics, zoom in on a year range...

Compare (all metrics)

In Explore, access research performance summaries of any desired research entity such as Institutions, Countries, Research Groups and Topics.Summary page provides research performance overviews at-a-glance...

Visualize research performance

Get an overview of your collaboration landscape. The map view in Current collaboration gives you a global overview of the collaboration partners of your institution. You can then zoom in to a specific...

How can my institution find collaboration partners?

In the new navigation, Overview and Collaboration modules are part of Explore in SciVal.Subject classifications are used in SciVal to categorize Scopus publications into scientific disciplines. There are...

How can I use subject classifications in SciVal?

SciVal helps you visualize and benchmark global research performance, build collaborations, spot emerging trends and create tailored reports.   Drawing on curated performance profiles for thousands of...

Introduction to SciVal: Build your views on global research

Access a list of Institutions that you collaborate with or have the potential to collaborate with. Start with a worldwide view of your institution’s collaboration landscape and then zoom in to individual...

Identify and evaluate existing and potential 
collaboration partners

Field-Normalized Policy Impact (FNPI) in SciVal indicates how the share of an entity’s publications cited in policy documents compares with the world average for similar publications. The metric helps...

SciVal Metric: Field-Normalized Policy Impact (FNPI)

In Compare, assess your strengths and areas for improvement by analyzing custom selections of entities, metrics and subject areas, which enable confident comparison and benchmarking.The ‘Benchmark all...

Benchmark and monitor progress

The Research Strength Score (THE) measures the representative research quality.

It is based on the 75th percentile value of 5-year Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI 5Y) calculated from the Scholarly...

Research Strength Score (THE)

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Publications in Journal Quartiles in SciVal indicates the extent to which an entity’s publications have been published in the selected journal quartiles: how many publications...

SciVal Metric: Publications in Journal Quartiles

SciVal allows you to do 'what if' scenario modeling. If I add a certain researcher to my team, how would my team perform?

Let’s define a research team and then compare its performance to a team made up...

What is the impact of adding a new researcher to my team?

SciVal Metric: Field-Weighted Views Impact

We are committed to ensuring that SciVal is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. We strive to provide an inclusive experience that enables everyone to effectively access and utilize...

SciVal Accessibility Statement

What publications are considered in the QS World University Rankings (WUR) year?

Sector collaboration metrics in SciVal indicate the degree of collaboration between authors with an academic affiliation, and authors with an affiliation from a non-academic sector: to what extent are...

SciVal Metric: Sector Collaboration

Who are the most talented researchers in my field? Which institutions are they associated with? And how do I find them?

The best approach to do this in SciVal is to first determine the top institutions...

How can my institution attract talented researchers?

SciVal gives you the flexibility to analyze any researcher or group of researchers from any institution. Create groups or even recreate your institution’s complete hierarchy with a few easy steps. You...

Creating researchers and departmental hierarchy structures

To evaluate the impact of your research, you can use SciVal to analyze your institution’s citation metrics. Useful metrics include Citation Count, Citations per Publication and Field-Weighted Citation...

How can my institution evaluate the impact of its research portfolio?

 

	Umov release: December 2018
	
	The December 4, 2018 release brings additional metrics guidance to SciVal:

	
		Responsible Use of Metrics - incomplete years - Throughout SciVal we now indicate if the...

Release Notes 2017-2018

Evaluate the collaborative links between up to ten dynamic Researcher Groups in the Collaboration matrix.

The Collaboration matrix is part of the Collaboration subscription and can be found in the Compare...

The Collaboration Matrix for Groups of Researchers

Entities are the building blocks of your analysis in SciVal, representing the research areas, topics, or organizations you focus on to gain targeted insights and make data-driven decisions.Select the section...

Introduction to Entities

 

	Ostrom release: December 2020
	
	The December 8, 2020 release brings Open Access analyses to SciVal, 97 publication classified China SDACD subject categories and an increase in our export limit to...

Release Notes 2019-2020

SciVal Metric: Views Count

Identify the top performers within the Research Area. In the Institutions map view you can get a global overview of the top performing institutions within the Research Area. You can zoom in to a specific...

How can I identify top performers, rising stars and most visible actors within a research topic?

The number of authors in Overview is a deduplicated count of authors at the institution who have contributed to the 'Scholarly output' (i.e. the number of papers published) at that institution. Both the...

How are the author count and Scholarly Output counts in the Summary page of the Overview module calculated?

SciVal Metric: Academic-Corporate Collaboration

Metrics can help you assess a researcher’s research output and scholarly impact. But it’s important to understand the limitations that metrics can have when looking at a researcher.

The ideal situation,...

How can I make sure I'm evaluating a Researcher fairly?

SciVal Metric: Patents Count and Main Patent Family Count

SciVal´s Ranking Analysis, available in the Overview and Benchmarking modules, provides robust information and transparency around the bibliometrics used by different rankings score indicators.Note that...

University Rankings in SciVal

The Citation Impact Score (THE) in the ranking is the average of the Global Citations Score and Country Normalized Citations Score.

The two citations Score are based on a 5-year Field-Weighted Citation...

Citation Impact Score (THE)

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Cited Publications in SciVal indicates the citability of a set of publications: how many of this entity’s publications have received at least 1 citation?
Cited Publications is...

SciVal Metric: Cited Publications

    Back to all metricsSNIP measures the citation impact of a journal. SNIP is a ratio between the “Raw Impact per Paper”, a type of Citations per Publicati

SciVal Metric: SNIP (Source-Normalized Impact per Paper)

    Back to Topics FAQs

Each publication within SciVal is assigned to at least one ASJC category. The assignment comes from the journal in which the article is published. We look at all of the publications...

How are Topics and Topic Clusters assigned to ASJC categories?

 The publications considered in the THE World University Rankings (WUR) has consistent pattern as explained with example below:Calculation for THE World University Rankings 2026 (Ranking year = 2026)Publications...

What publications are considered in the THE World University Rankings (WUR) year?

Create contextualized, plain-language summaries of SciVal analyses using generative AI.Smart Summaries* help turn SciVal metrics into clear, contextualized narratives. They explain what the metrics show,...

Smart Summaries - FAQ

The majority of publications are created with the input from multiple co-authors. Traditional citation metrics give each co-author the same citation impact, even though the actual contribution of each...

How can you analyze authorship in SciVal?

Use the entity selection panel, located on the left-hand side of the screen, like a workspace to define, add, remove, organize and use all your entities of interest. You can choose from the thousands of...

Working with Entities

Each year around May/June, the Scopus content for the previous year (i.e. 2025) is around 95% complete. This is the point we consider it a “complete year” and so we then roll our pre-defined time ranges...

What happens during the yearly rollover?


	Youth release: December 2024
	
	With the December 2024 release, we want to emphasize the importance of engaging and empowering youth in climate action. Young people bring extra energy, innovation, and...

Release Notes 2023-2024

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Geographical Collaboration Impact in SciVal indicates the citation impact of an entity’s publications with particular types of geographical collaboration: how many citations do...

SciVal Metric: Geographical Collaboration Impact

 


	Hydroelectricity release: December 2022

	
	The December release is dedicated to Hydroelectricity which is a form of renewable energy that uses the power of moving water to generate electricity. Hydroelectricity...

Release Notes 2021-2022






 


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The Field-Citation Average is the expected number of citations for a specific type of Scholarly Output, from a specific subject discipline (or disciplines) for a specific...

What is the Field-Citation Average?

    Back to Topics FAQs

There is a correlation between the prominence (momentum) of a particular Topic and the amount of funding per author within that topic. On average, the higher the momentum, the...

How does prominence relate to funding?

SciVal offers the flexibility to analyze a variety of pre-defined Research Areas or to self-define bespoke research areas, representing any field of interest to you.Research Areas can represent an area...

Define your own Research Areas

A Topic is a collection of documents with a common focused intellectual interest. There are 95,000 Topics in SciVal and they are often multidisciplinary.See which Topics your institution is currently active...

Conduct a portfolio Topic analysis

    Back to Topics FAQs

For research managers, who are trying to stay abreast of the latest research trends, SciVal Topics can help answer the following:


	What are the pockets of well-funded research in...

How can I use SciVal Topics?

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Number of Citing Countries in SciVal indicates the geographical visibility of an entity’s publications: from how many distinct countries have this entity’s publications received...

SciVal Metric: Number of Citing Countries

    Back to Topics FAQs


	Each bubble represents a Topic or Topic Cluster (depending on the view you’ve chosen).
	The size of the bubble indicates the output of the entity in the Topic or Topic Cluster.
	
		This...

What do the bubbles on the wheel of science represent?

    Back to Topics FAQs
A Topic is a collection of documents with a common focused intellectual interest and can be large or small, new or old, growing or declining. Over time, new Topics will surface,...

What is a Topic?

The Research Productivity Score (THE) gives a sense of the institution’s ability to get papers published in quality peer-reviewed journals.

The score is generated by dividing the subject-weighted Scholarly...

Research Productivity Score (THE)

Combine impact data, metrics and insights with local knowledge to demonstrate your broader research impact.Now with the Impact functionality you can: Demonstrate and highlight your policy and patent impact...

Impact analytics

In SciVal, all data can be filtered by selecting one or multiple subject areas. You can choose from the ASJC (All Science Journal Classification), which has 27 main categories and 334 subcategories, or...

How can I filter by single or multiple subject areas?

    Back to Topics FAQs

There are two scenarios when the publications in a Topic can change:


	Publications can be added as part of the weekly Scopus feed
	Publications that are 4 years old are re-evaluated...

How often are Topics updated?

    Back to Topics FAQs

Topic names are produced in a data-driven fashion based on keyphrases extracted from the titles, abstracts and author keywords associated to a Topic. Keyphrases are obtained by...

How are the names of Topics and Topic Clusters generated?

Analyze the research trends of any self or pre-defined Research Area, Publication Set, Topic or Topic Cluster with citation, publications and usage data, to discover key researchers, rising stars and current...

Analyze trends in research fields 




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Relative Activity Index (RAI) is defined as the share of an entity's publications in a subject area, relative to the global share of publications in the same subject. A value...

SciVal Metric: Relative Activity Index (RAI)

SciVal Metric: Outputs in Top Views Percentiles




 


Metric Sets
Metric sets are groups of related metrics to help you quickly build benchmarking tables. They are available for QS and THE World University Rankings and are grouped by the metric categories...

What are Metric Sets?

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 weighting of the Scholarly Output...

Sustainability Scholarly Output (QS)

    Back to Topics FAQs

Topic Clusters are formed by aggregating Topics with similar research interest together to form a broader, higher-level area of research. These Topic Clusters can be used to get...

What are Topic Clusters?

Self-citations are those by which an entity refers to its previous work in new publications. Self-citations are typically thought of in the context if an individual academic, but institutional self-citations...

What is a self-citation and how can they be excluded in SciVal?





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This is the count of Scholarly Output published by an entity (e.g. a university) that have been cited by Patents.

Example: 400 publications from Athena University have been...

SciVal Metric: Scholarly Output cited by Patents

Rankings Metric: International Collaboration considered in THE Rankings

The Research Excellence Score (THE) measures the institution’s contribution to the best research in each subject and overall. Excellence is measured considering the total number of publications by an institution...

Research Excellence Score (THE)

In addition to managing entities within the entity selection panel, My SciVal provides further functions including editing and sharing self-defined Research Areas.In ‘My SciVal’ if you want to see which...

My SciVal

Elsevier gives the ranking agencies a snapshot of data that they use as part of the ranking scores. This set of publications is static. However, the data in SciVal is updated weekly, with adjustments potentially...

Why are some publications outside the ranking year range?

The bibliometric datasets based on the U.S. News methodology are available in SciVal for the ranking year 2024.For more information on the U.S. News Best National Universities Rankings, please visit the...

U.S. News Best National Universities Rankings – U.S. News

You can analyze self-created Research Areas throughout SciVal to get further insights. SciVal created Research Areas cannot be used in Collaboration:HowSelect a module below to see what you can do when...

How do I analyze a Research Area in SciVal?

SciVal uses the Elsevier Fingerprint Engine to extract distinctive keyphrases within an entity.

The Elsevier Fingerprint Engine uses text mining and applies a variety of Natural Language Processing techniques...

How are keyphrases calculated?

Publications with hundreds or thousands of co-authors, commonly referred to as hyper-authored / kilo / thousand-author / hyperauthorship papers, can potentially skew the meaning of your results, especially...

What are hyper-authored papers / kilo papers and how can I remove them from my analysis?

The Patents Score (THE) recognizes the extent to which universities are supporting their national economies through technology transfer.It measures the university’s Patent-Citation Count received by Scholarly...

Patents Score (THE)

    Back to Topics FAQs

All single entities and their group, can all be analyzed based on the Topics and Topic Clusters they are active in.

When looking at Topics or Topic Clusters for groups of Institutions...

Which entities can I analyze based on the Topics and Topic Clusters?

Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI 5Y) 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...

Rankings metric: Field-Weighted Citation Impact - 5 years (THE)

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Academic-Corporate Collaboration Impact in SciVal indicates the citation impact of an entity’s publications with or without both academic and corporate affiliations: how many citations...

SciVal Metric: Academic-Corporate Collaboration Impact

For both publications and the awards volume (grants), each publication or award can be linked to multiple ASJCs. So, if a publication is in ASJC 1001, 1002 and 1003, then each ASJC receives a publication...

How are percentages calculated for the subject area charts?

In the Compare section, you may encounter dashes in tables or see certain entities disabled in charts. This typically occurs for the following reasons:In “Benchmark all metrics” and “Collaboration Matrix”:Zero...

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