Research analytics tools allow you to assess the performance or impact of research, by analyzing how published items are cited in other publications. Citations can be analyzed at the level of:
- Individual articles
- The output of individual authors or groups of authors (for example, a department or research group)
- The output of all authors associated with an institution
- The output of all authors associated with institutions in a country or continent.
University of Wyoming Libraries provides subscription access to two resources that track citations of the articles indexed in their respective databases: Web of Science (published by Clarivate Analytics) and Scopus (Elsevier).
Another product, InCites, uses data from Web of Sciences to analyze and compare research performance at the author, institution, and national levels. InCites also enables analysis of author collaborations, and of publication output in defined subject areas.
Google Scholar is a freely available service that indexes scholarly publications, providing a “cited by” number for each. Google Scholar Citations uses this data to provide summarized information about individual authors' research performance. Another freely available software product, Publish or Perish, provides additional analytical capabilities on data from Google Scholar.
Each of the above databases indexes a different, but overlapping, set of publications, over different periods, as described in the table below.
It's important to remember that NONE of these tools can be assumed to provide a complete picture of a scholar's publication output!
| |
Scopus |
Web of Science and InCites |
Google Scholar and Publish or Perish |
| Types of Publications Included? |
peer-reviewed journals, trade publications, book series, conference papers |
journals, conference proceedings, scholarly books |
articles, theses, books, abstracts, court opinions |
| Subject Areas Covered? |
physical sciences, health sciences, social sciences, life sciences, arts & humanities |
sciences, social sciences, arts & humanities |
undefined |
| Time Period Covered? |
Cited references:1970 to present
Content records: 1788 to present
|
Web of Science: 1900 to present
InCites: 1980 to present
|
unknown |
| Exclude Self Citations? |
yes |
yes |
no |
| Links to Citing Articles? |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Personal Account Required? |
no |
yes, for InCites |
yes, for some features |
| Software Download Required? |
no |
no |
yes, for Publish or Perish |
| Weighted Citation Impact?* |
yes |
yes |
no |
| Documentation of Coverage? |
Scopus Content Coverage Guide (PDF, 1.6 MB) |
Clarivate Analytics Master Journal List |
no |
| Documentation of Metrics? |
In the Scopus Help facility
|
InCites Indicators Handbook (PDF, 2,3 MB)
|
Publish or Perish Book
|
*Weighted citation impact
InCites and Scopus both provide calculated values that adjust raw citation numbers to make them more comparable across disciplines. In InCites, citations are weighted to reflect the normal citation practice in the discipline/subject category with which they are associated, the year of publication, and document type (Category Weighted Citation Impact), or the journals in which they are published (Journal Weighted Citation Impact). Scopus provides a single weighted metric that combines these adjustments, the Field Weighted Citation Impact. In all cases, a 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 value of two represents performance at twice the world average.