The number of times your publications have been cited by others may be used to assess quality of research and can be used for recruitment, promotion and funding allocation.
Using bibliometrics is only one (and often criticised!) way of looking at research performance. Be aware if you are looking at citation data, different search tools will have different years of coverage and very different methods of calculating a score. The main citation counting tools may be less useful for some subjects like Arts and Humanities, Engineering and Computer Science. See subject guides for more information for your subject area.
There are a number of different ways of assessing impact, including peer review, public engagement and funding received. See Research, Innovation and Enterprise webpages for more information and support.
Many people are now also becoming interested in Altmetrics – alternative metrics about how your work is used online. Citations in published research can take years to build up, but you’ll know how many mentions you’ve had on Twitter or Facebook within days.
Scopus (Elsevier) is another large bibliographic database like Web of Science that may be used for citation searching, journal impact or ranking calculations. Please note that Edinburgh Napier University does not have access to Scopus.
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