Skip to Main Content

How to Use Metrics in Promotion and Grants - a self-help guide: Your articles

Google Scholar - Journal Article Citation Count

Example statement:

My 2007 article on ABCDE has been cited 345 times in Google Scholar. (Source: Google Scholar, 21 November 2021).

  1. Go to Google Scholar.
  2. Search for the title of the article, conference paper, or book/chapter.
  3. View the number of citations for the document underneath its record in the search results "Cited by XX". 

Field-Weighted Citation Impact

Example statement:

My 2019 article on XYX has been cited 28 times and has a field-weighted citation views is  2.67 which suggest that it is 2.6 times above the world average. (Source: SciVal, 21st November 2021)

Scopus - Field-Weighted Citation Impact:

shows how well cited this document is when compared to similar documents. It takes into account:

  • The year of publication
  • Document type, and
  • Disciplines associated with its source.

The FWCI is the ratio of the document's citations to the average number of citations received by all similar documents over a three-year window. Each discipline makes an equal contribution to the metric, which eliminates differences in researcher citation behavior.

The global mean of the FWCI is 1.0, so an FWCI of 1.50 means 50% more cited than the world average; whereas, an FWCI of .75 means 25% less cited than the world average.

For more information:

Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles

Example - Statement:

27 of my articles published since 2011 are in the top 10 %. This is 18. 9% over the world average (source: SciVal 6th September 2021).

My article XXX had 76 citation, which meant it was on the 99 percentile compared with other articles in the same field of research (source: Scopus 6th December 2021).

SciVal - Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles :

Indicates the extent to which an entity’s publications are present in the most-cited percentiles of a data universe: how many publications are in the top 1%, 5%, 10% or 25% of the most-cited publications? These metrics are available in SciVal. 

For more Information: 

Scopus - Citation benchmarking:

calculates how citations for a particular article compare with the average for similar articles in the same field.

Scopus - FWCI (field-weighted citation impact):

considers variations in research and citation behavior across disciplines and facilitates benchmarking among disciplines.

It is the number of citations received by a document divided by the expected number of citations for similar documents in the same field of research.

How to view article metrics in Scopus

Watch this tutorial on: How to view document metrics in Scopus

Charles Sturt University acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which its campuses are located, paying respect to Elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations Peoples.Acknowledgement of Country

Charles Sturt University is an Australian University, TEQSA Provider Identification: PRV12018. CRICOS Provider: 00005F.