Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics are a traditional set of indicators which use citations in academic journals as an indication of the scholarly engagement and impact of research papers. A number of bibliometric tools are available which track citation data including SciVal, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar.

These all have varying subject and journal coverage and may provide different metrics. The University Library has subscriptions to SciVal, Scopus and Web of Science and library staff can assist with searches and bibliometrics reports.

SciVal

SciVal is the University's recommended tool for bibliometric analysis and reporting. It's a research analytics tool which can be used to analyse and track research performance across output, impact and collaboration. It has ready-to-use standardised reports and can generate visual and analytical reports on research performance on demand. SciVal can be used to explore and profile research excellence. It uses publication, citation and affiliation data from Scopus including 38 million publication records from almost 22,000 journals of 5000 publishers worldwide.

Login to SciVal with your GUID and password. You will have to register the first time you use the database. Your username is your email address. It is not case-sensitive.

The university subscribes to three modules:

  • Overview: Get a high level overview of the University of Glasgow, other institutions, countries or groups of researchers
  • Benchmarking: Compare and benchmark the university to other institutions, researchers or groups of researchers
  • Collaboration: Explore the collaboration network of the university and other institutions.

The SciVal Usage Guidebook provides practical advice on usage data and the responsible use of multiple metrics to analyse research.  The companion Metrics Guidebook has information on the Scopus data underlying the SciVal metrics as well as in-depth guidance on all of the SciVal metrics and scenarios for their practical use.

SciVal can also be used for Comparing your papers to the rest of the world [PPT] and there are a range of short videos available which cover:

There are additional guides on SciVal for Patent Metrics and Snowball metrics.

In addition to SciVal there are a range of other tools which can provide additional sources for citations and traditional indicators, including Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar.

Scopus

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Scopus provides a comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities. It features a range of tools to track, analyze and visualize research.

Web of Science

Web of Science has over 1 billion cited reference connections indexed from peer reviewed journals, books and proceedings across a wide range of disciplines. It includes citation counts and can provide citation counts and reports.

Journal Citation Reports

Journal impact factors can be found in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). It is a journal rather than an article level indicator. JCR is a unique database which is used to determine the relative importance of journals within their subject categories. Note thought that not all journals have impact factors. They must be indexed in Web of Science to have an impact factor. An impact factor is only one measure of the quality of a journal. It is calculated by the number of citations received by the journal, from other journals within the Web of Science database. It is strongly recommended that you do not look at the impact factor for a journal in isolation but use it to compare it against other journals in the same subject category.

Google Scholar Citations

Google Scholar Citations provide a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics.

Google Scholar Metrics

Google Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Scholar Metrics summarize recent citations to many publications, to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research. You can also explore publications in research areas of your interest.

Help and Support

If you want help, want to arrange a training session or discuss how you might use bibliometrics further, please get in touch with your College Librarian. They will be happy to work with you to get the best out of SciVal and related research tools.