InCites

These metrics are essentially 'counting' metrics as indicators of publication productivity and impact.  They form the basis for most of the other metrics used in InCites.

Web of Science Documents - The basic productivity measure.  The total number of Web of Science Core Collection items for a given entity (researcher, organization, region, funder, etc.) published in the given time period, regardless of document type.

Times Cited - The basic impact measure.  The total number of times at least one item in a set of Web of Science Documents has been cited.

Percent Cited - The percentage documents in the set that have received at least 1 citation

Citation Impact - The ratio of Times Cited per Web of Science Document.  This gives the average number of citations per item.  This measure is more 'stable' for large sets of documents, otherwise small changes in the number of documents can result in large shifts in citation impact.

h-index (or hirsch index) - A measure designed to combine productivity and impact into a single number.  The h-index for a set of documents is the highest number for which the following is true: "There are h documents cited at least h times".  This number is designed to correct for the influence of highly cited papers or highly prolific authors in a single measure. 

These metrics should only be used to directly rank or compare researchers or publications in the same research area and time period, since patterns of publication and citation practices can vary widely across disciplines.

Percentile and Normalized metrics make comparisons across journals, research areas, and organizations easier since they take into account research subject areas, publication year, and document type. 

Percentiles

In percentile metrics, the percentile is the percent of items cited less often than the item of interest, and therefore higher percentile indicates better relative performance. (This change was made in June 2021)

• Average Percentile - for a set of items, the average percentile is the mean of the percentiles of each individual item.  If an item appears in more than one research area category, the best (highest) percentile is used when calculating the mean.
• % of Documents in top 10% -  for a set of items, the proportion that is ranked in the top tenth percentile in its year, subject, and document type.
• % of Documents in top 1% - for a set of items, the proportion that is ranked in the top 1 percentile in its year, subject, and document type.

Related percentile metrics are based on the papers reaching certain percentile benchmarks in the 22 Essential Science Indicators (ESI) categories, rather than the narrower Web of Science Research Areas.  Arts & Humanities journals are not included in the ESI categories.

• % of Highly Cited Papers - for a set of items, the proportion that is ranked in the top 1% of one of the 22 ESI categories based on the most recent 10 years of citations.
• % of Hot Papers - for a set of items, the proportion that is ranked in the top 0.1% of one of the 22 ESI categories based on the most recent 2 months of citations to publications less than 2 years old.

All metrics dealing with percentiles should take into consideration that analysis of small groups of records (such as a single researcher) may not have statistical significance; these metrics are more appropriately used for medium and large data sets.

Normalized Metrics

Normalized metrics for citation counts compare the times cited for an item to the expected (average) number of citations received by other items of the same publication type, year of publication, and subject area or journal.  If the normalized citation impact is a ratio less than 1, the set of items is performing poorer than expected; if it is greater than 1, the set of items is performing better than its peers.

• Category Normalized Citation Impact - calculated by dividing an actual citation count by an expected citation rate for documents with the same document type, year of publication, and subject area. When a document is assigned to more than one subject area, the harmonic average is used. The CNCI of a set of documents is the average of the CNCI values for all of the documents in the set.
• Journal Normalized Citation Impact - is calculated by dividing an actual citation count by an expected citation rate for documents with the same document type, year of publication, and journal.

All metrics of citation impact should take into consideration that citation counts for recent publications can be low and variable, so citation impacts may be influenced by the time period under analysis.

When analyzing collaborations, InCites provides certain metrics that can indicate what type of collaborations exist as evidenced by co-authored publications.

• International Collaborations - the total number of publications in a set with at least two authors located in different countries
• % International Collaborations - the percent of paper in a set that have at least two authors located in different countries
• % Industry Collaborations - Industry collaborations are papers with at least one corporate author affiliation. This indicator shows the percentage of publications in a set that have a corporate co-author.  All papers by individual at a corporation are considered industry collaborations, no matter what their co-authors' affiliation. 
  Only those organizations that have been 'unified' by InCites will have an assigned organization type. There will be corporate affiliations that have not yet been unified, will not have an organization type and therefore will not be identified as an industrial collaboration; this tends to focus on large multinational corporations and may lead to regional bias. All Industry Collaborations metrics are probably, therefore, an underestimate.

Journals are grouped into quartiles according to what percentage of journals rank lower than them when arranged by Journal Impact Factor, a measure of the average number of citations received in a two-year period.  A Quartile 1 (Q1) journal ranks higher than 75% of the journals in its category, a Q2 journal ranks higher than 50% of journals, but lower than Q1 journals, etc.

75% < Q1 < 100%

50% < Q2 < 75%

25% < Q3 < 50%

0% < Q4 < 25%

InCites has several metrics that use this ranking. 

• Documents in Q1, etc. - Number of documents that appear in a journal in a particular Journal Impact Factor Quartile in a given year.
• % of Documents in Q1, etc. - % of documents that appear in a journal in a particular Journal Impact Factor Quartile in a given year.  

Note: InCites uses the best quartile for journals that appear in multiple Web of Science Research Areas.  However, when a research area is specified in an analysis, the quartile for that particular journal and research area is used.

Please keep in mind that since this is a ranking based on citedness of journals, not individual articles, it is not a direct measure of an individual article's or researcher's citation performance.  It is only an indirect measure of journal quality or prestige and should not be used as the sole basis of evaluating a researcher's work.

When looking at a analysis result, if you click on the number of Web of Science Documents shown, you will be able to see a report listing all of the documents that contribute to the summary statistics. This report always has the same column headers, and cannot be changed.

(click image to enlarge)

Metrics/Data shown:

• Bibliographic Data including
  • Article Title - Click on title to see the full record in Web of Science, when available.
  • Authors - only the first five authors are shown
  • Source - Title of book, journal, or conference
  • Research Area - The research area(s) of your default subject scheme that the journal has been assigned to
  • Volume
  • Issue
  • Pages
  • Publication Date
• Item Metrics
  • Times Cited - number of times cited in Web of Science databases
  • Journal Expected Citations - The expected number of citations calculated from other items of the same type (article, review, etc.) published in the same journal and year.
  • Category Expected Citations - The expected number of citations calculated from other items of the same type (article, review, etc.) published in the same subject categories and year.
  • Journal Normalized Citation Impact - The ratio of times cited to expect citations.  Anything over 1 means it was cited more than expected.
  • Category Normalized Citation Impact - The ratio of times cited to expect citations.  Anything over 1 means it was cited more than expected.
  • Percentile in Subject Area - the percent of articles 'better' than this item published in the same subject category and year.
  • Journal Impact Factor - not available for all item types.  Only journals have JIF values, not books or conference papers.  Also, journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) do not have JIF values.  Note:  The JIF is for this current year, not the year of publication of the item.  The JIF will change from year to year as it is based on a two year rolling average.

Using the Report:

• You may display up to 100 records per screen.
• The entire report may be downloaded using the 'down arrow' icon at the upper right.
• You can sort the report by clicking on any of the column headers.  Text columns will sort alphabetically, numerical columns by value.  Click again to reverse the sort. (The default sort is Times Cited, most to least).