CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: scopus citescore

  • Dimensions Altmetrics, Scopus & Web of Science: A DORA-Aligned Comparison

    Dimensions altmetrics, Scopus CiteScore, and Web of Science’s Impact Factor answer different questions about the same paper: how much online attention it attracted, how its journal’s four-year citation average compares, and how its two-year citation count compares against a curated index. No single number from any one database satisfies the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)’s call for multi-indicator, qualitative-plus-quantitative evaluation — which is why research offices increasingly triangulate across all three.

    A citation database is a structured index of scholarly publications and their citation links, used to measure research coverage, impact, and attention across disciplines. Dimensions, Scopus, and Web of Science each build that index differently, and the differences matter directly for institutions trying to run dimensions altmetrics-aware, DORA-compliant assessment rather than single-metric ranking.

    How does coverage differ across Dimensions, Scopus and Web of Science?

    Coverage breadth is the single biggest structural difference between the three databases, and it is measurable rather than a matter of opinion. A 2021 Scientometrics study by Singh, Singh, Karmakar, Leta and Mayr found that Dimensions indexes 82.22% more journals than Web of Science and 48.17% more journals than Scopus, largely because Dimensions ingests preprints, grants, patents, clinical trials, and policy documents alongside conventional journal articles.

    A separate large-scale comparison published in Quantitative Science Studies (Visser, van Eck and Waltman, 2021, MIT Press) benchmarked Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref and Microsoft Academic together and found that Dimensions and Crossref offer the broadest raw coverage, while Scopus and Web of Science retain more curated, higher-quality affiliation and subject metadata. Web of Science’s Core Collection remains the most selective of the three, with editorial evaluation criteria dating to Eugene Garfield’s 1960 Science Citation Index; Scopus, launched by Elsevier in 2004, applies a comparatively more inclusive Content Selection and Advisory Board process.

    The practical implication: a citation count pulled from only one database will systematically undercount or overcount depending on discipline, document type, and region. A 2020 comparison from the German Kompetenznetzwerk Bibliometrie (Stahlschmidt and Hinze) reached the same conclusion — the three sources are not interchangeable, and cross-checking is a foundational bibliometric hygiene step, not an optional extra.

    What metrics does each database produce?

    Each platform has developed its own headline indicator, and none of the three is a like-for-like substitute for the others.

    Database Owner Headline metric Citation window Altmetrics integration
    Dimensions Digital Science Citation counts + linked Altmetric Attention Score No fixed window; article-level Native — shares parent company with Altmetric
    Scopus Elsevier CiteScore; Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) via SciVal 4-year rolling window PlumX Metrics
    Web of Science Clarivate Journal Impact Factor (JCR) 2-year window (5-year variant available) Article-level usage counts; expanding via Research Intelligence tools

    CiteScore, introduced by Elsevier in 2016, divides all citations a journal receives in a given year by all documents (not only “citable items”) published in the preceding four years, and is published free of charge — a deliberate contrast with the subscription-gated Journal Impact Factor. Field-Weighted Citation Impact normalises a paper’s citations against the world average for its subject, publication year, and document type, where a score of 1.0 represents parity with the global average; this makes FWCI more field-comparable than a raw citation count. The Altmetric Attention Score, meanwhile, is not a citation metric at all — it is a weighted count of online attention (news coverage, policy documents, X/social posts, Wikipedia references, blogs) that Dimensions surfaces natively because Dimensions and Altmetric are both Digital Science products.

    Which database best supports DORA-compliant, multi-indicator assessment?

    DORA, published in 2012 and now signed by thousands of organisations worldwide, asks institutions to stop using journal-based metrics such as the Impact Factor as a proxy for the quality of an individual researcher’s contributions, and instead to consider the value and impact of all research outputs alongside qualitative peer judgement. The 2015 Leiden Manifesto (Hicks, Wouters, de Rijcke and Rafols, published in Nature) added ten operating principles for responsible metrics use, including that quantitative evaluation should support, not replace, qualitative expert assessment.

    All three database vendors now publicly reference these frameworks, but their practical alignment differs. Digital Science, Dimensions’ parent company, is listed on DORA’s public signatory register, and Dimensions’ native pairing with Altmetric gives assessors an attention-based indicator alongside citations without needing a separate subscription. Elsevier has endorsed the Leiden Manifesto and built CiteScore’s open methodology partly in response to its principles. Clarivate likewise cites the Leiden Manifesto in its own responsible-metrics guidance and has begun layering a “Societal Impact Framework” onto Web of Science Research Intelligence to capture impact beyond citation counts.

    None of the three databases is independently DORA-compliant by design — compliance is a property of how an institution uses the data, not of the database itself. A single Impact Factor, CiteScore, or Altmetric Attention Score used alone to rank individuals contradicts DORA regardless of source. Multi-indicator assessment requires combining citation-based indicators from at least one curated database with attention-based indicators and qualitative peer review — which is precisely why UK funders and the Research Excellence Framework have explicitly excluded journal impact factors from submission guidance since 2014, requiring panel-level qualitative judgement instead.

    Where does OpenAlex fit as an open alternative?

    OpenAlex, launched in 2022 by the non-profit OurResearch as a fully open successor to the discontinued Microsoft Academic Graph, has emerged as the fourth reference point in this comparison. Unlike Dimensions, Scopus, and Web of Science, OpenAlex publishes its entire dataset and API without subscription cost, drawing on Crossref, ORCID, and ROR identifiers for disambiguation rather than proprietary matching.

    OpenAlex does not yet match the curated metadata quality or the established institutional trust of Scopus or Web of Science, and it carries no equivalent to the Altmetric Attention Score. But for institutions constrained by licensing budgets, or for bibliometrics tools built on reproducible, auditable pipelines, OpenAlex is increasingly used as a free cross-check against the commercial databases rather than a replacement for them.

    Answer-first questions

    What is Altmetric a measure of?

    Altmetric measures online attention, not citation impact. It tracks mentions of a research output across news media, policy documents, social platforms, blogs, and Wikipedia, then produces a weighted Attention Score. Because it captures engagement that predates or bypasses formal citation, it is treated as complementary to citation-based indicators, not a replacement for them.

    What counts as a good Altmetric score?

    There is no universal threshold, because Attention Scores vary enormously by field, output type, and publication date. As a rough benchmark, Altmetric itself notes that a score above roughly 20 typically outperforms most tracked outputs, but comparisons are only meaningful against similar papers in the same journal and timeframe, never as an absolute cutoff.

    Is Scopus or Web of Science better for research assessment?

    Neither is unconditionally “better” — Scopus offers broader, more geographically diverse journal coverage with a transparent four-year CiteScore, while Web of Science offers deeper historical coverage back to 1900 and the still-widely-recognised Impact Factor. DORA-aligned assessment favours using both alongside non-citation indicators rather than choosing one as authoritative.

    Implications for research offices

    Research administrators selecting or combining these tools should treat the choice as an assessment-design decision, not a procurement afterthought. Three practical consequences follow directly from the coverage and metric differences above:

    • A researcher’s citation count and h-index will differ meaningfully between Dimensions, Scopus and Web of Science — institutions must specify and disclose which source underlies any reported figure.
    • Attention-based data (Altmetric, PlumX) captures policy and public engagement that citation-only databases miss entirely, which matters for funders assessing societal impact pathways.
    • Free, open sources such as OpenAlex are viable supplementary cross-checks, particularly where licensing cost restricts access to all three commercial platforms.

    Conclusion

    The three databases are converging on responsible-metrics language while remaining structurally distinct in coverage, indicator design, and cost. Institutions that want genuinely DORA-compliant, multi-indicator assessment should treat Dimensions, Scopus and Web of Science as complementary evidence sources — pairing at least one citation database with an attention-based indicator and qualitative peer review — rather than defaulting to whichever single number is easiest to pull from a subscription dashboard.

  • CiteScore vs Impact Factor Under DORA and CoARA

    In the citescore vs impact factor comparison, neither metric wins under research-assessment reform: CiteScore (Elsevier/Scopus) tracks citations across a four-year window and all document types, while Journal Impact Factor (Clarivate/Web of Science) uses a two-year window limited to “citable items” — and DORA and CoARA both instruct assessors not to use either as a proxy for research quality.

    CiteScore is Elsevier’s Scopus-based journal metric, calculated by dividing the citations a title receives in a calendar year by the number of documents it published across the preceding four years. Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is Clarivate’s older, narrower equivalent, published annually through the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Both numbers get quoted constantly in tenure files, funding applications and journal marketing — and both are formally out of step with how research-assessment reform now says journals should be judged.

    What Is the Difference Between CiteScore and Impact Factor?

    The core difference is database, window length, and document scope. CiteScore draws on Scopus and counts citations to every document type — articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, data papers and editorial material — over a rolling four-year window. Journal Impact Factor draws on Web of Science and restricts its denominator to “citable items” (chiefly research articles and reviews) over a two-year window, even though its numerator counts citations to all document types.

    That asymmetry in JIF’s own formula — a broad numerator over a narrow denominator — is one of the most persistent, well-documented criticisms of the metric, and is a large part of why CiteScore, introduced by Elsevier in December 2016, was built with a wider document scope from the outset.

    Feature CiteScore Journal Impact Factor
    Provider Elsevier Clarivate
    Underlying database Scopus Web of Science (Journal Citation Reports)
    Citation window 4 years 2 years
    Document types counted All document types Primarily “citable items” (articles, reviews)
    Access Free on Scopus journal pages Requires a JCR subscription
    First introduced December 2016 Concept 1955; JCR published annually since 1975

    How Is Each Metric Calculated?

    CiteScore for year Y equals citations received in Y to documents published in Y-3 through Y, divided by the number of documents published across that same four-year span. Elsevier updates a “CiteScore Tracker” monthly, so the figure moves before the annual snapshot is finalised — a transparency feature JIF does not offer.

    Journal Impact Factor for year Y equals citations received in Y to items published in Y-1 and Y-2, divided by the number of “citable items” published in those same two years. Clarivate publishes the finalised figure once a year through the Journal Citation Reports, alongside a JIF quartile ranking within each subject category.

    • Shorter windows (JIF) react faster to hot topics but are more volatile for low-volume or slow-citing fields.
    • Longer windows (CiteScore) smooth out volatility but can undervalue journals in genuinely fast-moving disciplines.
    • Neither window length is “correct” — both were chosen as engineering trade-offs, not as validated proxies for quality.

    What Do DORA and CoARA Say About Journal-Level Metrics?

    The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), published in 2012 and now signed by tens of thousands of individuals and organisations across more than 160 countries, states that journal-based metrics — explicitly including Impact Factor — should not be used “as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.” Although DORA’s original text names JIF, the same critique applies directly to CiteScore: both are journal-level averages applied to individual outputs and individual people.

    The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), launched in 2022 and coordinated with the European University Association, commits its signatories — now numbering hundreds of universities, funders and research organisations — to “abandon inappropriate uses in research assessment of journal- and publication-based metrics, in particular any inappropriate uses of Journal Impact Factor.” CoARA’s Agreement treats CiteScore as falling under the same prohibition, since its ten commitments target the practice of journal-metric substitution for quality judgement, not one specific brand of metric.

    Neither declaration asks institutions to abolish CiteScore or JIF outright. Both ask assessors to stop using either figure as a shortcut for reading, or for judging, the individual piece of work in front of them.

    CiteScore vs Impact Factor: Which Survives Assessment Reform?

    Under DORA and CoARA criteria, neither metric “survives” as a legitimate proxy for individual-level quality — but CiteScore scores better on two specific reform tests: transparency and access. Its underlying Scopus data and monthly tracker are freely visible; JIF’s Web of Science data sits behind a JCR subscription, which is one reason CiteScore is often described as the more auditable of the two.

    Jurisdiction-specific policy already reflects this shift. The UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) guidance instructs assessment panels not to use journal-level metrics, including Impact Factor, as a proxy for output quality — panel members are required to read and judge the submitted work itself. Frameworks such as the Leiden Manifesto (2015) and the UK’s Metric Tide review (2015) reach the same conclusion from a different angle: any single citation metric, however calculated, is a partial and gameable signal that needs qualitative context, not a standalone score.

    In practice, most responsible-assessment guidance converges on the same answer: use CiteScore or JIF only as one directional data point about a journal’s citation behaviour — never as a stand-in for peer review, narrative CVs, or discipline-aware qualitative judgement of an individual’s work.

    Common Questions on CiteScore vs Impact Factor

    Which is better, Impact Factor or CiteScore?

    Neither is “better” in absolute terms. CiteScore suits fields with slower citation cycles and full Scopus coverage, while Journal Impact Factor suits comparisons within Web of Science’s narrower, more selective index. Under DORA and CoARA criteria, both are inappropriate substitutes for peer review or individual-level research assessment.

    What is a good CiteScore for a journal?

    A “good” CiteScore is field-relative. Elsevier’s own guidance points assessors toward a journal’s CiteScore Percentile rather than the raw number — a title at the 90th percentile outperforms 90% of journals in its Scopus subject category, which is more meaningful than comparing raw scores across disciplines.

    Is 3.5 a good Impact Factor?

    There is no universal threshold. A 3.5 Impact Factor is strong in fields with slow, sparse citation practices but modest in fast-citing fields such as immunology or oncology. Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports ranks journals by subject-category quartile, not by a fixed numeric cutoff, for exactly this reason.

    What is a decent CiteScore?

    Elsevier measures this through the CiteScore Percentile: a title in the 96th percentile ranks as high as, or higher than, 96% of journals in its category. Institutions applying DORA principles are advised to cite percentile standing within a discipline rather than treat any single CiteScore value as “decent” in isolation.

    Implications for Institutions and Publishers

    For research administrators, the practical takeaway is procedural, not metric-specific: audit promotion, tenure and funding criteria for language that treats CiteScore or JIF as a quality proxy, and replace it with narrative or portfolio-based evaluation where DORA or CoARA commitments apply — a shift increasingly embedded in research administration standards and workflows. For publishers, transparency about which metric — and which window — is being quoted matters more than which number is higher, since CiteScore and JIF are not interchangeable and a journal can carry a strong figure on one while looking average on the other.

    As more funders and universities formalise CoARA commitments, expect journal-level metrics to persist as directional signals in publisher marketing and library collection decisions, while disappearing — by policy, not by accident — from individual hiring, promotion and grant-review criteria.