CiteScore: a new metric to help you track journal performance and make decisions

Impact plays an important part in understanding the performance of a journal over time and making decisions about its future. It is impossible to get a true picture of impact using a single metric alone, so a basket of metrics is needed to support informed decisions.

Today Elsevier is launching CiteScore metrics(opens in new tab/window): a new standard that gives a more comprehensive, transparent and current view of a journal’s impact that will help you guide your journal more effectively in the future.

CiteScore metrics are part of the Scopus basket of journal metrics that includes SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper), SJR (SCImago Journal Rank), citation- and document- counts and percentage cited. The integration of these metrics into Scopus provides insights into the citation impact of more than 22,220 titles.

CiteScore metrics are a family of eight complementary indicators listed below. You can find out more about the individual indicators on the Scopus Journal Metrics website(opens in new tab/window).

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  CiteScore

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  CiteScore Tracker

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  CiteScore Percentile

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  CiteScore Quartiles

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  CiteScore Rank

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  Citation Count

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  Document Count

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  Percentage Cited

CiteScore itself represents a robust approach for two reasons:

1. The three-year citation window. Research(opens in new tab/window) has found that in slower-moving fields, two years’ worth of data is too short; yet five years is too long to consider in faster-moving fields. Three years is the best compromise for a broad-scope database, such as Scopus, as it incorporates a representative proportion of citations across all disciplines while also reflecting relatively recent data.

2. CiteScore’s numerator and denominator both include all document types. This means not only articles and reviews but also letters, notes, editorials, conference papers and other documents indexed by Scopus are included. As a result, the numerator and the denominator used in the CiteScore calculation are consistent. This approach gives a more complete picture of citation impact and makes manipulating the calculation more difficult.

Comprehensive

CiteScore is essentially the average citations per document that a title receives over a three-year period. It is simple to replicate. A CiteScore 2015 value is available for most active serial titles in Scopus ― journals, book series, conference proceedings and trade journals ― that started publishing in 2014 or earlier.