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. Field-weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) by

Scopus Scopus is a scientific abstract and citation database, launched by the academic publisher Elsevier as a competitor to older Web of Science in 2004. The ensuing competition between the two databases has been characterized as "intense" and is c ...

divides the total citations by the average number of citations for an article in the scientific field. Alternative article-level metrics include the CD index, a measure of the disruptiveness of an article.

Adoption

Traditionally,

bibliometrics Bibliometrics is the application of statistical methods to the study of bibliographic data, especially in scientific and library and information science contexts, and is closely associated with scientometrics (the analysis of scientific metri ...

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 The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a type of journal ranking. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious or important within their field. The Impact Factor of a journa ...

or researcher-level metrics such as the

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

. Article-level metrics, on the other hand, may demonstrate the impact of an individual article. This is related to, but distinct from,

altmetrics In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics (stands for "alternative metrics") are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and H-index, ''h ...

. Starting in March 2009, the

Public Library of Science PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and launched its ...

introduced article-level metrics for all articles. The

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

publisher

PLOS PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and launched it ...

provides article level metrics for all of its journals including downloads, citations, and altmetrics. In March 2014 it was announced that COUNTER statistics, which measure usage of online scholarly resources, are now available at the article level.

Adoption

See also

References

Further reading