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Research Impact: Article Level Impact

What are Article Level Metrics?

Citation counts are the traditional way that the impact of an article has been measured. Two major databases that track and analyze citation counts are Scopus and Google Scholar.

Keep in mind that these databases do not have 100% overlap, which means that the number of citations an article has received will vary in each source. Searching more than one database can help you compile a more comprehensive list of all of the articles that have cited your work.

Beyond simple citation counts, you can also analyze the citing articles to look for trends in factors such as which journals cite an article the most, what countries or institutions citing authors are from, and what research fields the citing articles are in.

Scopus Citation Counts

You can find the citation count for an article in Scopus by clicking on "cited by" after searching for an article.

By clicking on "analyze search results", you can look information about the citing articles, including

  • Year of publication
  • Journal
  • Author
  • Affiliation
  • Country

Google Scholar Citation Counts

You can view the citation count for an article in Google Scholar by clicking on "cited by" after searching for an article.