Research Impact: Article Metrics

What Are Article-level Metrics?

Traditional article metrics are based on the number of times an article has been cited. Some newer metrics break down the context of particular citations, such as to give background on a topic or to support or dispute a claim. Note that many alternative metrics, such as views or downloads, are also article-level metrics.

How Article-level Metrics Can Be Used

Authors can keep track of sources that cite their work to help determine their impact. They can note which of their works have been cited most and by whom. They can also perform qualitative analysis by identifying the parts of a work that have been cited most and the context of the citations.
Researchers may look for highly cited articles on a topic to help them identify especially influential works. Databases such as Scopus, Dimensions, and Web of Science show citation counts for search results.

Limitations of Article-level Metrics

Citation patterns very between fields and subject areas.

Three factors that influence citation patterns include:

the size of the field;
the types of information sources used by researchers in the field; and
the number of sources that works in the field tend to cite (University of Oklahoma Libraries, 2022).

For these reasons, any discussion of citation counts needs to include reference to the field of study.

Not all important works are highly cited, and not all highly cited works are good quality.

For example, controversial articles often receive a high proportion of negative citations. Some tools, such as Scite, attempt to provide context to citations, noting whether citations support or contrast with with the original work, but it's important to note that these tools are still in development and are not perfect.

It's important to consider the age of articles when examining citation counts.

Articles can accumulate citations for many years after being published, and newer articles have not had as much time to being receiving citations (University of Oklahoma Libraries, 2022).

Multiple databases track citations, but no database will find all citing articles.

They also often have overlap, which means that you cannot just add up citation counts from different databases (University of Oklahoma Libraries, 2022). You can either:

Choose one database and use its citation counts, or
Review lists of citing articles from multiple databases and remove any duplicates in order to determine an accurate citation count for an article.

Finding Article-level Metrics

Three commonly used tools for article metrics are Scopus, Dimensions, and Google Scholar (note that OSU does not subscribe to Web of Science). See below for examples of what those look like in each tool for a given article (Low Health Literacy and Health Outcomes: An Updated Systematic Review).

Note the significant differences in citation counts across platforms, as well as the variety of other metrics such as Field-Weighted Citation Impact, Field Citation Ratio, and Relative Citation Ratio that provide additional ways to consider the impact of an article.

Remember that no database includes all articles, so consider searching in multiple places to find citations.