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Metrics and what they indicate

Citation metrics are a quantitative indicator of the reach of a publication.

Other Resources

Article-level Metrics

Metric Name	Description	Tool
Citation count	Number of citations to a publication by other publications.	Scopus Web of Science Dimensions (free version) Google Scholar (freely available)
Article downloads	The number of times the full-text of an article has been downloaded from a platform. The definition of a download may vary across platforms	QUT ePrints (if you've uploaded the full-text of your publication) Publishers websites
Article views	The number of times an article has been viewed on a platform. The definition of a view might vary across platforms	SciVal Publisher websites
Field-Weighted Citation Impact*	Compares the number of citations received by a publication in the year of publication, plus the following three years, to the average number of citations received by similar publications (publication type, year, and subject area) in the year of publication and following three years. The world average (the word being the Scopus database) is 1.00. A Field-Weighted Citation Impact greater than 1.00 indicates the publication has received more citations than expected according to the global average of similar publications. For example, a Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 1.55 indicates the publication has been cited 55% more than the global average.	Scopus SciVal
Category Normalized Citation Impact*	The Category Normalized Citation Impact of a document is calculated by dividing the actual count of citing items by the expected citation rate for documents with the same document type, year of publication and subject area. When a document is assigned to more than one subject area an average of the ratios of the actual to expected citations is used. It allows comparisons between entities of different sizes and different subject mixes. A CNCI value of one represents performance at par with world average, values above one are considered above average, and values below one are considered below average. A CNCI value of two is considered twice the world average.	InCites

*Normalised metric

Author-level Metrics

Metric	Description	Tool
Citation count	The number of citations to the author's publications. The number will vary across platforms.	Scopus Web of Science Dimensions Google Scholar SciVal InCites
Citations per publication	The average number of citations received per publication. This is calculated by dividing author's citation count by the number of publications. As a mean average, it can be skewed by highly cited publications.	Scopus Web of Science Dimensions Google Scholar SciVal InCites
h-index	Intended to be a measure of productivity and impact. An author has an h-index of X if X of their papers has received at least X citations. For example of a researcher with an h-index of 10 has 10 papers that have received at least 10 citations.	Scopus Web of Science Dimensions Google Scholar SciVal InCites
Field-Weighted Citation Impact*	Compares the number of citations received by a publication in the year of publication, plus the following three years, to the average number of citations received by similar publications (publication type, year, and subject area) in the year of publication and following three years. The world average (the word being the Scopus database) is 1.00. A Field-Weighted Citation Impact greater than 1.00 indicates the publication has received more citations than expected according to the global average of similar publications. The Field-Weighted Citation Impact of a small set of publications can be skewed by a highly cited publication.	SciVal
Category Normalized Citation Impact	The Category Normalized Citation Impact of a document is calculated by dividing the actual count of citing items by the expected citation rate for documents with the same document type, year of publication and subject area. When a document is assigned to more than one subject area an average of the ratios of the actual to expected citations is used. It allows comparisons between entities of different sizes and different subject mixes. A CNCI value of one represents performance at par with world average, values above one are considered above average, and values below one are considered below average.	InCites

*Normalised metric