Who this is for: Authors and researchers who want to measure the impact of their published work using Web of Science and InCites Benchmarking & Analytics.
Measuring the impact of your body of work involves both qualitative and quantitative methods. This article walks through the "bag of metrics" available in Clarivate resources for quantitative impact measurement.
A word to the wise: No metric is perfect. Each has a purpose and each has limitations. The key is knowing what a metric can measure — and what it can't.
In this article:
- Citation counts in Web of Science
- Find and analyze your citing articles using Author Records
- Highly Cited Papers and Hot Papers
- Author performance metrics in InCites Benchmarking & Analytics
- Usage counts as a measure of interest
- What to do if your papers aren't in Web of Science
- Recommended videos
Citation counts in Web of Science
Citation counts are a traditional, key measure of impact.
On the full record page of any item in Web of Science, you can view that item's citation counts in the Citation Network panel on the right.
My paper's Times Cited count is lower than I expected. Am I missing any citations?
Consider doing a Cited Reference Search.
The Times Cited count in Web of Science reflects instances where a citing article was successfully linked to the cited reference. If an author cites your work but incorrectly keys your name, the title, or another identifying detail, Clarivate's indexing algorithm processes most common mistakes and still links the citation correctly.
For the mistakes the algorithm can't resolve — known as citation variants — you can run a Cited Reference Search to capture those missed citations and get a fuller picture of your work's citations.
See also: Cited Reference Searching
Find and analyze your citing articles using Author Records
Author records are automatically generated when you run an Author Search in Web of Science. They're groups of papers our algorithm determines are likely written by a single author. You can identify, curate, and claim your author records by creating a profile — see Build your profile for details.
Steps:
- Search Web of Science to find your articles using Author Search.
- Find the author record(s) that are yours and click through to view them. You can claim your author record to verify the publications are correct.
- Review the full suite of metrics on your author record, including:
- A citation network for all your combined publications
- A link to a full citation report for your work
- An Author Impact Beamplot, which shows a normalized citation percentile for your papers compared to others of the same age, category, and document type
Highly Cited Papers and Hot Papers
Essential Science Indicators identifies papers in the Web of Science Core Collection generating outsized impact compared to their peers (same field, same publication date). If your institution subscribes to Essential Science Indicators and your paper qualifies, you'll see an icon next to it in Web of Science.
| Status | Icon | Criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Highly Cited Paper | Published in the last 10 years; receiving the most citations (top 1%) compared to peer papers of the same field and publication year | |
| Hot Paper | Papers published in the past two years that received a number of citations in the most recent two-month period that places them in the top 0.1% of papers in the same field. |
Author performance metrics in InCites Benchmarking & Analytics
For a single paper or group of papers, use the advanced metrics in InCites Benchmarking & Analytics for a more nuanced view of your impact and performance.
Note!
InCites Benchmarking & Analytics requires sign-in. If you've already set up a Web of Science account (see First steps), use the same credentials to sign into InCites. Otherwise, use Register an email address below the Sign in button.
Steps:
- In InCites, choose Researchers from the Analyze menu.
-
Search your name or unique identifier.
If you haven't set up a ResearcherID or ORCID account and added your publications to your profile yet, see Build your profile first.
-
Review your results. While h-index is one available option, InCites offers additional metrics for a fuller picture:
Metric What it tells you % Documents in Top 1% Share of your papers cited enough to rank in the top 1%, normalized for category, year, and document type % Documents in Top 10% Same as above, for the top 10% threshold Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) Impact normalized for subject focus, age, and document type. A value of 1 = world average; above 1 = above average (e.g., 2 = twice the world average); below 1 = below average % Industry Collaborations Share of your papers produced with co-authors from industry % International Collaborations Share of your papers produced with international co-authors - To view performance metrics for each paper you've authored, click the Web of Science document count in the table. This opens an overlay listing all your documents with metrics calculated per document.
How much interest has your work generated?
Times Cited is one indicator of a paper's impact. Web of Science also provides Item Level Usage Counts, which show how much interest a publication has generated among platform users — regardless of citation activity. For some disciplines, usage counts may be the only available indicator of influence; for others, they help identify which papers are drawing the most attention right now.
Usage counts are derived from two tracked activities:
- A user clicks through to the full text of an item
- A user exports an item to bibliographic management software (like EndNote)
| Count | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Since 2013 | All-time interest in an item (usage tracking began in 2013) |
| Last 180 Days | Interest generated in the last 180 days |
You can view the Usage Count for any item in Web of Science, below the Times Cited count.
What to do if your papers aren't in Web of Science
My paper isn't in Web of Science. How can I determine my impact if my work isn't indexed?
Even if your scholarly work itself isn't indexed, citations to it from items that are indexed can still be captured and found. This is called a Cited Reference Search, and it works for almost anything — a pop song, a movie, a famous letter, a work of art, a local landmark — as long as something indexed in Web of Science has cited it.
There are more than one billion searchable cited references in Web of Science.
See also: Cited Reference Searching for non-indexed work
Recommended videos
What is a Cited Reference Search
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