Article-level metrics

Article-level metrics are citation metrics which measure the usage and impact of individual scholarly articles. The most common article-level citation metric is the number of citations.^[1] Field-weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) by Scopus divides the total citations by the average number of citations for an article in the scientific field.^[2]

Alternative article-level metrics include the CD index, a measure of the disruptiveness of an article.^[3][4]

Adoption

Traditionally, bibliometrics have been used to evaluate the usage and impact of research, but have usually been focused on journal-level metrics such as the impact factor or researcher-level metrics such as the h-index.^[5] Article-level metrics, on the other hand, may demonstrate the impact of an individual article. This is related to, but distinct from, altmetrics.^[6]

Starting in March 2009, the Public Library of Science introduced article-level metrics for all articles.^[7] The open access publisher PLOS provides article level metrics for all of its journals^[8] including downloads, citations, and altmetrics.^[9] In March 2014 it was announced that COUNTER statistics, which measure usage of online scholarly resources, are now available at the article level.^[10]

See also

• Bibliometrics
• Scientometrics