How can I access and understand citation data?

Answer

What are citations? 

A citation refers to the acknowledgment of one research work by another—typically by referencing it in a publication. Citations help track the academic influence of research and are commonly used as indicators of impact, relevance, and reach.

Simple citation counts for articles and authors 

Citation counts show how many times a publication—or an author’s body of work—has been cited by others. These counts are available from a range of sources, including:

  • Scopus: (Elsevier's abstract and citation database) 

  • SciVal: (Elsevier analytics platform, built on Scopus data)

  • Web of Science: (Clarivate's abstract and citation database)

  • InCites: (Clarivate analytics platform, built on Web of Science data)

  • OpenAlex: (open, community-driven scholarly database)

  • Scite: (platform combining citation data with qualitative citation context)

Example of article citation count within Scopus

Please note: citation counts can vary between platforms due to differences in coverage, such as:

  • The journals and sources indexed

  • The types of publications included (e.g., journal articles, conference papers, books)

  • The timeframe covered

For a fuller picture of citation impact, we recommend checking multiple sources and consulting our guidance on responsible use of metrics.

Normalised Citation Metrics (FWCI and CNCI)

Raw citation counts can be misleading when comparing across different fields or time periods. In the Natural Sciences for example, typical citation rates can be up six times greater than in the Humanities. This is where normalised citation metrics can help:

Two widely used indicators are:

Both compare the number of citations a publication receives to the average for similar outputs (same field, publication type, and year).

How to interpret these metrics:

  • A score of 1.00 = world average

  • Above 1.00 = cited more than expected

  • Below 1.00 = cited less than expected

Why use them?

  • To enable fairer comparisons across disciplines and timeframes

  • To help analyse research performance for groups, departments, or institutions

  • To add additional context to simple citation counts

Points to consider:

  • Can be very volatile for small datasets or individual researchers

  • May not reflect interdisciplinary impact fully

  • Recent publications may not have had enough time to accumulate citations

Want to learn more?

Explore our My Research Essentials: Using Citation Analysis to Measure Research Impact training resource. It introduces normalisation, explains why more citations don’t always mean more influence, and shows how field variation affects citation patterns.

You can also refer to:

Percentiles in Citation Analysis 

Percentiles offer another way to understand how a publication compares to others in its field and publication year.

For example, in SciVal or InCites:

  • 99th percentile = Top 1% most cited

  • 95th percentile = Top 5%

  • 90th percentile = Top 10%

  • 75th percentile = Top 25%

  • 50th percentile = Median performance
     

Why use percentiles?

  • Ideal for benchmarking institutional or departmental performance

  • Useful for identifying standout publications

  • Field-normalised, making them more reliable across disciplines

  • Less affected by outliers than averages


Note: Percentiles for recent publications may change as more citations accrue. Very small or niche research areas may have limited comparative data.

Considerations when using percentiles: 

  • Like FWCI/CNCI, percentiles are field-normalised, allowing for cross-disciplinary comparisons 

  • They are less affected by outliers than mean-based metrics 

  • For recent publications, percentiles may change rapidly as citations accumulate 

  • Very small fields or niche research areas may not provide reliable percentile data 

Elsevier produce detailed guidance to their percentile-based metrics, which includes information on how this metric is calculated: 

You can also access guidance from Clarivate relating to the percentile metrics used within Web of Science and Incites. 

Further information and support 

Citation metrics are useful tools—but they should always be used thoughtfully and in context. They are not definitive measures of research quality or impact and should be combined with qualitative evaluation and expert judgement.

If you would like to discuss these metrics in further detail, and how you can access them, please contact us 

 

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  • Last Updated 15 May 2025
  • Views 48
  • Answered By John Hynes

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