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Citation Metrics Workshop

General Introduction

To arrange a workshop for your class, research group, department, or lab, contact your subject librarian. For background about citation metrics, you can also contact UBC Library's Scholarly Communications.

Citation analysis looks at the frequency (and patterns) of citations to books, journal articles, individual journals, conference proceedings, etc. that appear in the bibliographies of books, journal articles, conference proceedings and other scholarly outputs, such as software, patents and presentations.

  • Citation analysis started in the sciences in the 1960s, spreading to the social sciences and humanities in the 1970s.
  • Citation analysis uses metrics based on citation counts (e.g. journal impact factor) and statistical analysis (e.g., h-index).

Citation metrics are used to measure the impact of

  • an individual researcher
  • an individual journal article, book, etc.
  • an individual journal
  • a department or university

Related Guides

Metrics Toolkit

Not sure which metric to use? Consult the Metrics Toolkit to understand what a metric means, how it is calculated, and if it's a good fit for your question.

Cautions and Concerns

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Initiated by scholars and publishers, DORA calls for elimination of the use of journal-based indicators "as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions." 

Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics. Nature, 520, 429–431 (23 April 2015) doi:10.1038/520429a.  Ten principles for "best practice in metrics-based research assessment so that researchers can hold evaluators to account, and evaluators can hold their indicators to account".

Singh Chawla, Dalmeet. What's Wrong with the JIF in 5 Graphs. Nature Index. April 3, 2018

Stephan, P.,  Veugelers, R., Wang J.  Reviewers are blinkered by bibliometrics : Nature News & Comment. Nature 544, 411–412 ().

Wilsdon, J. (2016). The Metric Tide: Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. SAGE.

Institutional Metrics at UBC

UBC measures "scholarly production and bibliometrics (outputs)" for the institution as a whole with these metrics.

Field-Weighted Citation Impact:
This metric measures the utilization by peers of UBC research publications, through field normalized citation impact factors.
This measure, along with other bibliometric data, forms a proxy for the quality and impact of the outputs of research and
scholarship at UBC. The metric allows us to compare research quality with peer institutions around the globe. This metric
was selected to provide additional evidence to existing research funding metrics, to form a more complete indicator of the
quality and impact of the research outputs and scholarship at UBC. SciVal is the bibliometric tool used at UBC to source this
publication metric.

High Quality Publications:
This metric measures the percentage of UBC journal publications published in top quality (top 25%) journals. Along with
other research metrics, this forms a proxy for the quality and impact of the outputs of research and scholarship at UBC. This
metric was selected to provide additional evidence to existing research funding metrics, to form a more complete indicator
of the quality and impact of the research outputs and scholarship at UBC. SciVal is the bibliometric tool used at UBC to
source this publication metric."*

*Research Excellence. Goal 1: Increase the Quality and Impact of UBC's Research and Scholarship, part of Connected by Commitment: 2015-2016 Annual Report.