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Citation Metrics

Journal impact factor, h-index for authors, citation tracking, and faculty bibliography

What are bibliometrics?

Bibliometrics can help you to make decisions about where to publish your research and how to get information about the impact of published research.

Key Terms

Impact factor is a metric used to assess a journal's relative impact within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more impactful than those with lower ones. Impact Factor is based on the number of citations a journal receives within a 2 year period.

H-index is a metric used to measure a researcher's productivity (number of publications) and the impact of their work (how many times their articles have been cited).

Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) is "a field-normalized metric that shows the citation impact of one or more articles relative to the average NIH-funded paper."  For more information on RCR see:

Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): A new metric that uses citation rates to measure influence at the article level
Bruce Ian Hutchins, Xin Yuan, James M Anderson, George M Santangelo