Article-level metrics

Article-level metrics reveal the time engagement, visibility, and scholarly reach of a single piece of work.

Citation counts record how many times a publication has been cited by other scholarly works, reflecting its visibility within academic research. They should not be interpreted as a measure of societal impact or overall value.

Citation counts are available through databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, OpenAlex, and Google Scholar, among others. However, each database only counts citations from publications indexed within its own system, so the same publication may show a different citation count depending on which database is consulted.

These indicators evaluate the scholarly impact of a publication by comparing its actual citation count against a global baseline. Calculated using the Scopus database (for FWCI) or the Web of Science platform (for CNCI), this methodology benchmarks a paper against similar works published in the same year, within the same academic discipline, and of the same document format. Rather than looking at raw citation numbers, these metrics use a relative scale centered around the worldwide average.

For example, a score of exactly 1.00 indicates that the publication's citation performance directly matches the global average for that specific field and year. A score of 1.50 means the work has achieved 50% more citations than typically expected for its peer group.

This metric tracks the percentage of an institution's research outputs that rank within the top 1%, 10%, or 25% highest-cited works globally. It relies on data from major indexes such as Scopus, Web of Science, OpenAlex, or Dimensions, benchmarking performance specifically by academic discipline and publication year.

To determine a paper's percentile, comparable outputs, published in the same year, covering the same subject, and sharing the same document format, are ordered from the highest citation count to the lowest. The paper's specific rank within this ordered list defines its percentile score. For instance, a score in the 90th percentile demonstrates that the publication received more citations than 90% of its peer group, securing a spot in the top 10% most-cited papers for that category and timeline. Percentiles are recalculated every year.