Journal- and article-level metrics

There are many different metrics used to measure the influence of your articles and the journals in which they are published. Understanding their definitions, uses and limitations will help you make decisions about where to publish in the future.

Journal-level metrics

Metrics have become a fact of life in many — if not all — fields of research and scholarship. In an age of information abundance (often termed "information overload"), having a shorthand for the signals for where in the ocean of published literature to focus our limited attention has become increasingly important.

For more information about journal-level metrics, please see measuring a journal's impact.

Article-level metrics

Article-level metrics (ALMs) quantify the reach and impact of published research.

ALMs seek to incorporate data from new sources (such as social media mentions) along with traditional measures (such as citations) to present a richer picture of how an individual article is being discussed, shared and used.

For more information about article-level metrics, please see measuring an article's impact.

Citation trends and journal analysis

It is possible to assess the development of a journal by tracking its own performance patterns over time. Scopus is invaluable for such analyses, supporting citation analysis from 1996 over any number of years that is appropriate to the question being addressed. As an editor, you have complimentary access to Scopus.

The feature "compare sources" in Scopus provides you with a quick, easy and transparent view of journal performance, including several journal metrics. Using citations from over 20,000 titles from 5,000 international publishers, the compare sources feature gives access to an objective overview of the journal landscape going back to 1996.