Research metrics tools

There are a number of different databases and websites which provide research metrics. Metrics from any of these sources should be used following the University of Nottingham Principles for Responsible Indicator Use. The ones listed below are either available through a University of Nottingham subscription or freely available.

Scopus

University of Nottingham subscription

Scopus is an Elsevier-owned academic inter-disciplinary database which includes metrics for publications, authors and institutions. Scopus citation and publication data underpins the Times Higher Education and QS World University Rankings. The data from Scopus feeds into SciVal which offers more detailed analysis options.

Each publication indexed in Scopus has the number of citations in Scopus, Field-Weighted Citation Index and Views Count displayed on the abstract page.The Metrics Details page allows you to view adjusted versions of the metrics, for example limited by date or excluding self-citations. Authors with at least one publication indexed in Scopus have a Scopus author profile, including metrics such as citation count and percentage of documents co-authored with researchers in other countries and regions.

Scopus Sources is a free tool which provides journal level metrics for publications indexed in Scopus. While these may be useful to inform publishing choices, they should not be used to assess individual research outputs or researchers, in line with DORA and the University of Nottingham Principles for Responsible Indicators Use.

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SciVal

University of Nottingham subscription

SciVal is an Elsevier-owned research analytics tool which provides data at the level of individual publications, groups of publications, individual researchers, groups of researchers and institutions. Publication, citation and view count data are supplied from Scopus and supplemented with data on policy citations from Overton and patent citations from 43 patent offices. A wide array of metrics can be found in SciVal, including some which are calculated using weighting or averages. Consult the SciVal metrics guidance for more detail.

Data can be limited by either ASJC or THE subject classifications, and to specific date ranges. Publications can be mapped to SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).

SciVal can be used to benchmark research groups, schools and institutions using a variety of different indicators, and to show changes in metrics over time. It has extensive options for visualising and presenting metrics.

Browse SciVal Support Center

View SciVal training materials

Web of Science

University of Nottingham subscription

Web of Science is a collection of academic databases. The default search option is the Web of Science Core Collection, which includes the Science, Social Science, and Arts & Humanities Citation Indexes and Book Citation Indexes.

Web of Science includes metrics about publications (documents), authors and journals, based on citations from other documents indexed in the Web of Science databases. Author metrics include the percentage of papers on which a researcher was first, last or corresponding author.

For some publications, the citations have been classified by the section in which they appear and the nature of the reference, with the categories Background, Basis, Support, Differ and Discuss. However, the accuracy of the categorisation has yet to be clearly evidenced.

Web of Science links to Journal Citation Reports, a tool which provides journal level metrics. While these may be useful to inform publishing choices, they should not be used to assess individual research outputs or researchers, in line with DORA and the University of Nottingham Principles for Responsible Indicators Use.

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View Web of Science training materials

Google Scholar

Freely available online

Google Scholar is a freely available index of academic literature and other documents, including books, book chapters and dissertations. Publications in Google Scholar with any citations have a “Cited by” number. Google Scholar profiles show citation metrics for individual authors.

Google Scholar uses a web crawler to identify documents for inclusion, without human vetting. It is therefore more comprehensive and includes references from documents such as dissertations and preprints. However, it is also more likely to pick up articles in predatory journals, including those produced by paper mills or AI, and spam articles intended to manipulate citation metrics.

As a result, metrics based on citations, such as the H-index, are sometimes higher in Google Scholar than on other platforms such as Scopus or Web of Science.

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OpenAlex

Freely available online

OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of research, made by the non-profit OurResearch. It displays citation metrics for research outputs and researchers, including percentage of publications published open access. OpenAlex has broad disciplinary coverage, and is particularly strong in Arts and Humanities in comparison to Scopus or Web of Science.

OpenAlex can be searched by the user interface. More complex queries currently require use of the API – if you would like assistance searching OpenAlex please contact the Research Intelligence team by emailing library-researchsupport@nottingham.ac.uk.

Search OpenAlex

View OpenAlex help center

Altmetric

Limited data freely available online

Altmetric is a system which tracks attention received by research outputs in a range of sources, including social media, news outputs and policy documents. Some publisher websites display the Altmetric "donut" or "badge" which visually presents this data for an individual article. The number in the centre of the donut is the Altmetric Attention Score, a weighted measure of attention. There is also a free bookmarklet which can be installed in a browser to display this data.

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Dimensions

Limited data freely available online

Dimensions is a platform which indexes research publication related information, including patents, policy documents, grants and datasets. With a free account it is possible to search for publications and view their citations in indexed academic literature, and the metrics for citations in other categories such as policy.

PlumX Metrics

Limited data freely available online

PlumX captures metrics about research across a range of categories, including citations, social media mentions and usage. PlumX metrics can be viewed for individual articles on the Scopus article page.

Learn more about PlumX

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Research metrics tools

Scopus

SciVal

Web of Science

Google Scholar

OpenAlex

Altmetric

Dimensions

PlumX Metrics

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