Research Guides: Bite-Sized Library Workshop Materials: Citation Metrics 101: Journal Rankings, Impact Factors, Altmetrics and more

Introduction

Citation Metrics 101: Journal Rankings, Impact Factors, Altmetrics and more

Impact Factor, h-index, Altmetrics, Google Scholar metrics… You may have heard about them, but what are they, actually? Join us to demystify citation metrics and try out tools available. Great for faculty, postgraduates, and researchers!

This workshop was designed by Aaron Tay, Head, Data Services. If you have any questions, please contact Aaron at aarontay@smu.edu.sg.

Workshop Materials

Citation Metrics 101 Slides

Additionally, refer to our research guide Research and Publishing Support.

Related Databases

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is an important cross-disciplinary abstract & citation database of research literature. Use Scopus to search for article level citation metrics like total cites or FWCI as well as a list of sources indexed in Scopus and their respective Journal level metrics like Citescore, SJR, and SNIP.

SMU Libraries has access to Scopus API that can be used for text and data mining. More info here.

The subscription also includes Scopus AI, a generative AI tool, integrated with the Scopus database to enhance research efficiency. It offers features like natural-language search, concise summaries with references, concept maps for visualizing research links, and expert identification. Designed for speed and reliability, it supports interdisciplinary collaboration while leveraging trusted, peer-reviewed academic content.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Use this database to identify highly cited articles in a subject area and authors who cite a specific article. Use it to search for articles using keyword and even by institution name.
Web of Science includes Social Sciences Citation Index (from 1900), Science Citation Index Expanded (from 1965), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (from 2008), and Book Citation Index (2005-2018)

SMU Libraries has access to Web of Science API Lite. More info here.
Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
Use this tool to evaluate the impact and influence of journals indexed by Web of Science. In Journal Citation Reports, you can browse by subject category and view journal impact factors of journals indexed in SCIE, SSCI and AHCI & ESCI (from JCR 2023 onwards).
scite This link opens in a new window
New discovery and citation index. Search over 900M citation statements and find citations and well supported literature for your research projects.

Search and browse papers by type of citation (mentioning, supporting & contrasting), or section (Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion). Also includes scite assistant, an AI tool that extracts information from papers found to generate an answer.
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After sign-in Get a individual premium account with individual features like alerts and dashboards by registering with your SMU email on scite (link at bottom of screen). After which you can just use the account password to login.
Overton This link opens in a new window
Overton is the world’s largest searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers with over 4.7 million documents. It collects data from 182 countries (including Singapore) and thousands of sources worldwide such as NBER, World Bank, Federal Reserve, Asian Development Bank and even Government of Singapore. See sources list
Overton also allows you to see which of your papers are cited or mentioned by policy documents at both an individual level or at an institutional level helping you track your influence outside academia.

Overton also classifies policy documents by UN SDGs ( Sustainable Development Goals) allowing you to filter by specific goals.

Workshop Recordings

To watch the video, please login using your SMU account and password.