Library Help: Office For Open Research

What are citation percentiles?

Citation percentiles compare the citation performance of a publication to others of the same field, publication type, and year. They show how well a paper is performing in terms of citations relative to its peers, rather than as an absolute number.

For example, a paper in the 90th percentile has received more citations than 90% of similar publications—placing it in the top 10% for citation impact within its category.

Citation percentiles are a field-normalised metric, helping to account for differences in citation practices across disciplines and publication types.

Our My Research Essentials online resource on Citation analysis provides you with a very useful introduction to percentiles and how they can be used responsibly to consider a publications impact:

👉 My Research Essentials: Using citation analysis to measure impact

Why are citation percentiles useful?

Citation percentiles offer a number of benefits when evaluating research impact:

1. Benchmarking citation impact: Citation percentiles allow researchers and institutions to benchmark the performance of a specific publication or set of publications against others in the same field. This gives a clearer picture of how well a particular work is performing relative to the body of literature in its discipline.

2. Contextualised comparison: Unlike raw citation counts, citation percentiles provide a relative context for understanding how a paper is performing. Since citation practices differ between fields and time periods, citation percentiles normalise the data, allowing for a fairer comparison across different disciplines and publication types.

3. Identifying high-impact research: By analysing citation percentiles, researchers and institutions can identify their most influential or impactful works. A publication in the top percentiles (e.g., 90th or 95th percentile) is often a sign of research that is having a significant impact within its field.

4. Evaluating research quality: Citation percentiles help to assess the quality of research outputs. While a high citation count is an important indicator of impact, citation percentiles give more meaningful insight into how a publication compares to other similar works, taking into account the field-specific citation patterns.

5. Supporting promotion and funding: Citation percentiles can be used as evidence in applications for research funding, promotions, or as part of research impact statements. Publications in the higher percentiles can be highlighted to demonstrate a researcher's or institution's strong impact on their field.
    

How are citation percentiles calculated?

Citation percentiles are based on the distribution of citation counts for similar papers. For example:

• A paper in the 50th percentile performs better than half of similar publications.

• A paper in the 90th percentile performs better than 90%—indicating strong citation performance.

• The 100th percentile (top 1%) includes the most highly cited papers in a field.

Why citation percentiles vary

Percentiles are influenced by:

• Field of study: Different disciplines have different citation norms (e.g., biomedical research often cites more heavily than humanities).

• Publication type: Review articles tend to be cited more frequently than original research.

• Publication year: Older papers have had more time to accrue citations; percentiles adjust for this by comparing within the same year.
   

Where can I find citation percentiles?
 

SciVal (Elsevier)

Built on Scopus data, SciVal provides citation percentiles for individual papers, authors, institutions, and research groups.
It allows you to:

• Benchmark publications against global datasets

• View how many papers appear in top 10%, 5%, or 1% percentiles

• Export lists of publications with percentile data

Scopus (Elsevier)

Scopus itself also shows citation percentiles on article pages, allowing you to assess the relative performance of individual outputs.

InCites (Clarivate)

Based on Web of Science data, InCites provides similar percentile metrics:

• View publication percentile ranks by subject category, year, and document type

• Identify outputs in the top 10% or top 1% globally

• Benchmark performance for individuals, departments, or institutions

📌 To explore citation percentiles in Web of Science or InCites, please contact the Office for Open Research

How to Find Citation Percentiles in SciVal 

To find citation percentiles in SciVal, follow these steps:

 1. Access SciVal 

• In order to access SciVal you will need to register for an account with Elsevier. You must use your University of Manchester email address and credentials in order to do this.  Once you have registered the tool can be accessed from www.scival.com 

2. Search for Your Paper or Author:

• You will need to locate your author profile within SciVal. Use the Explore function, then select Researchers & Groups. You will need to use the Create/Import option to locate your profile if you do not already have this saved within SciVal.

3. View Citation Percentile Data:

• Once you’ve found your profile, use the Publication Metrics option to view details of any papers which appear in the Top 10% citation percentiles (or above). You can also use the View list of publications option to details for individual papers. These can be exported which will provide details of individual paper percentile numbers. 
   

How to Find Citation Percentiles in Scopus

To find citation percentiles in Scopus, follow these steps:

1. Log In to Scopus:

   • Access Scopus using the link provided within Library search

2. Search for the Paper:

   • Enter the title, DOI, or other identifiers to search for the paper you're interested in.

3. Locate Citation Data:

   • Scopus will display citation metrics for that publication, including its citation percentile relative to similar papers in the same field and time period.
      

Further Reading

For more details on citation percentiles and how to use them in SciVal, you can refer to Elsevier’s dedicated resources:

📘Elsevier’s Citation Percentiles in SciVal

If you have further questions then please contact the Office for Open Research