Impact & visibility
Bibliometrics is the measurement of research output using indicators such as the number of publications and citations. Bibliometric parameters are regarded as traditional measures of impact but are a source of debate because, for example, they say nothing about the social relevance of the research. Alternative measures (including Altmetrics and Alternative Assessment Metrics) are new parameters for measuring the ‘use’ of publications (e.g. the number of downloads, discussion of articles on social media, use in Wikipedia pages and blogs).
The citation statistics for your article can be found in Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus. You should be aware that the citation statistics (may) differ according to the database, because they are calculated on the content of that particular database.
For more information about the databases, consult the information sheets for Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus.
The impact factor of a journal can be found in the Journal Citation Reports in Web of Science. As a traditional bibliometric parameter, the impact factor is debatable since it is not a good indicator of the quality of the content. However, this measure is still used by researchers, policymakers, funding bodies and libraries for benchmarking, collaborations and identifying trends, amongst other things.
UGent has a licence for Altmetric Explorer for Institutions. Using this online tracking tool for research output, you can collate parameters such as the number of tweets, shares and readers of your article.
For more information about Altmetric(s) and how you can access them, click here (UGent intranet).
| Parameter | At the level of… | Significance | Calculation | Possible source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Impactfactor (IF) | Journal | Visibility factor of a journal within a specific discipline | Average number of times that articles from the last two years have been cited in the year in question | Web of Science (Journal Citation Reports) |
| CiteScore | Journal | Visibility factor of a journal within a specific discipline | Average number of times that articles from the last three years have been cited in the year in question | Scopus |
| CiteScoreTracker | Journal | Visibility factor of a journal within a specific discipline | Average number of times that articles from the current year have been cited
Is updated monthly. |
Scopus |
| Cited half-life | Journal | Measure of the currentness of a journal. In other words:
What is the current interest in the journal? |
How many publication years do you have to go back from the issue in question to obtain 50% of all citations to the journal? | Web of Science (Journal Citation Reports) |
| Citing half-life | Journal | Measure of the innovative nature of a journal | How many publication years do you have to go back from the issue in question to obtain 50% of all references of the journal? | Web of Science (Journal Citation Reports) |
| SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) | Journal | Measure of the prestige of the journal | Every citation gets its own weighting, similar to the algorithm that Google uses to rank search results. By dividing the score of a journal equally over all citations of the year in question, the normal number of citations per discipline, which can vary greatly, is corrected. | Scopus |
| SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) | Journal | Measure of the impact of a journal within a specific discipline. Facilitates the comparison of journals from different disciplines. | Features of citing articles from the same discipline: frequency, speed, coverage of the database used. Average number of citations is compared with the potential. | Scopus |
| Immediacy index | Journal | Measure of the speed with which people respond to articles in the journal | Number of citations in year x to articles in year x, divided by total number of articles in the journal in year x (gives you the Immediacy Index of year x) | Web of Science (Journal Citation Reports) |
| Citatie-index | Article | Visibility factor of an article within a specific discipline | Number of citations of an article (total or per time period) | Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, publisher e.g. PLOS |
| Usage data | Article | E.g. number of downloads | – | Publisher e.g. PLOS |
| Altmetrics | Article | Shares, mentions on
|
– | UGent has a licence for Altmetric Explorer for Institutions (for more info, click here).
Other: Altmetric.com, Scopus, publisher, e.g. PLOS |
| Hirsch factor of h-index | Article | Career index | The number ‘n’ indicates that ‘n’ scientific articles have at least ‘n’ citations = number of articles for which the number of citations is greater than their sequence number | Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus |
You can find more details in the information sheets about Web of Science and Scopus.
There is now a wide range of identification systems, e.g. Scopus ID, ResearcherID, arXiv Author ID, RePec Author Service, PubMed Author ID, Google Scholar Profiles, Microsoft academic research ID, AuthorClaim, JISC Names, Mendeley Profile, ResearchGate Profile, Figshare profile, etc. Within this context ORCID is an all-embracing, ‘neutral’ player. ORCID is a community-driven organisation and non-profit initiative that originated in the research sector, and whose aim is the unique and persistent identification of researchers and authors.
UGent has opted for the Create & Connect approach with Trusted Party Licence: researchers register their own ORCID-ID. This enables the university to read these ORCID profiles and incorporate specific information in Biblio (e.g. ORCID number and short bio).
There is more information here about the benefits, and ORCID at UGent.
Do you have a question related to your literature review or do you need help with searching, processing or publishing of your literature/data? Then please fill in our form to give us a clear view of your question and so that we can advise you efficiently. Alternatively, you could email us at kcgg@ugent.be.