Scopus

Citation research, impact metrics, and research analytics are ways to attempt to assess the performance or impact of research by analyzing how published items are cited in publications. There are many different kinds of metrics, and many different sources can be used for this purpose. Scopus is one such frequently used resource. It can be used to analyze citations at a variety of levels, including individual journals, individual articles, and the output of an author. For more detailed descriptions of other types and sources of impact metrics see our library guide on "Citation Research and Impact Metrics". 

Scopus provides a great deal of instructional and reference material to help you use the database to demonstrate research impact. Two good places to start are: 

• How Scopus Works: Metrics
• Scopus LibGuide: Metrics

CiteScore is a product from Elsevier, using citation data from the Scopus database to rank journals. As with other journal ranking metrics, to compare journals across disciplines requires a "normalized" ranking, which CiteScore provides as a percentile ranking within the journal's subject category. In addition to the CiteScore number and percentile ranking, CiteScore also includes the SJR (Scimago Journal Rank) and SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) numbers.

Important Points:

• Because the CiteScore is based on raw citations counts, comparing CiteScores in different disciplines penalizes journals in fields with naturally low citation numbers.
• CiteScore may assign journals to more than one subject category. Additionally, the selected subject category for CiteScore in some cases has been either incorrect or questionable.
• To compare journals across subject areas, CiteScore provides a CiteScore Percentile which normalizes the raw CiteScore within its subject area. The scale runs from 100 (highest rank) down to 1 (lowest rank).
• If a journal has been assigned to more than one subject area, the CiteScore Percentile will be from the subject area in which the journal ranked the highest.
• CiteScore uses approximately 22,000 journals plus conference papers and reviews indexed in the Scopus database as its source data.
• The annual CiteScore covers articles published in the previous three years.
• CiteScore includes front matter (editorials, news, letters to editors, etc.) in its calculations for how many documents are in each journal; consequently, journals with a lot of front matter, which is generally not cited, have a lower CiteScore (sometimes substantially lower) than their Journal Impact Factor (JIF).
• CiteScore is produced by a major publisher (Elsevier) of journals which some have criticized as conflict of interest.

Individual authors' names can easily be looked up in Scopus. From there one can retrieve measures such as citation counts, an h-index, and often alternative metrics for social media, etc. 

Using an author search, find all the publications in the database for an individual. Recommended search strategy:

• "lastname firstinitial" as author
• "AND arizona state university" as affiliation name (or wherever the author is affiliated)
• Click on the author's name to view their complete profile

There is another resource that specifically covers only ASU researchers called experts.ASU.  Data contained in Experts.ASU is pulled from Elsevier's SCOPUS database. Only data for ASU faculty is included; for articles not in Experts.ASU, use the SCOPUS database to obtain citation counts.

• Scopus

  Scopus is an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and web sources with tools to track, analyze, and visualize research. Scopus provides access to a broad portfolio of peer-reviewed content from around the world.

To find citation counts in Scopus

1. Go to the Scopus database
2. Search by the document's title
3. In the results list, look in the far-right hand column for the citation count.
4. To see what documents cited the document, click on the citation count.

Article performance can also be measured by comparing the article in question with the "average article" within the same field or journal. One way to do this is by using the Field Weighted Citation Impact score from Scopus. 

To get an articles's FWCI:

• Go to the Scopus database
• Using the article's title, find the record for that article in the database
• Click on the article's title to see the full record 
• On the full record, look at the the Metric box on the right column for: 
  • Number of citations,
  • The percentile that number represents, and
  • Field-Weighted Citation Impact Score (FWCI)
• You may have to click on "View All Metrics" to see the FWCI and more.

Citation benchmarking is more complex than basic citation counts. More explanation can be found here: https://libguides.asu.edu/citation/citationbenchmarking