Elsevier releases 2017 CiteScore values

Elsevier has released the 2017 CiteScore values, its latest assessment of thousands of serial scholarly publications, and is now available for Scopus subscribers as well as non-subscribers.

More than 23,350 source titles covering 330 disciplines are ranked across eight indicators, which are all part of CiteScore Metrics. These include: CiteScore, CiteScore Tracker, CiteScore Percentile, CiteScore Quartiles, CiteScore Rank, Citation Count, Document Count, and Percentage Cited. All calculations are transparent and reproducible.

Andrea Michalek, vice President of research metrics and product management at Elsevier, said: ‘CiteScore Metrics were launched in 2016 in response to academia’s call for metrics that provide a broader, more transparent view of journal performance. Since then we’ve seen over 20 publishers begin to adopt the metric, some using the free API to display the monthly CiteSore Tracker on their website.  As is the case for any metric, it takes time to build up familiarity and set new standards, and it’s a journey—a journey we are on with the entire academic community as new perspectives on research evaluation are formed.’

With free access to CiteScore Metrics’ underlying data, values can be recalculated by anyone, offering transparency to researchers, publishers and the wider academic community. All document types in Scopus are counted in the calculation of the CiteScore Metrics.

CiteScore Metrics are part of a collection of research metrics, Elsevier’s “basket of metrics”, available on or through Scopus. Other metrics include journal, author, institutional, and article-level metrics captured in PlumX Metrics (covering citations, social media mentions and coverage in mainstream media), supporting a holistic view of research performance.

Andrew Plume, director of market intelligence at Elsevier, added: ‘Our basket of metrics concept underscores the two golden rules of research evaluation: always use both quantitative and qualitative indicators side-by-side, and when choosing quantitative indicators to always use more than one.  With this approach Elsevier is responsive to the needs of researchers and research leaders and is constantly scanning the horizon for useful new metrics to add to the basket.’