Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): A New Metric That Uses Citation Rates to Measure Influence at the Article Level.

ABSTRACT: Despite their recognized limitations, bibliometric assessments of scientific productivity have been widely adopted. We describe here an improved method to quantify the influence of a research article by making novel use of its co-citation network to field-normalize the number of citations it has received. Article citation rates are divided by an expected citation rate that is derived from performance of articles in the same field and benchmarked to a peer comparison group. The resulting Relative Citation Ratio is article level and field independent and provides an alternative to the invalid practice of using journal impact factors to identify influential papers. To illustrate one application of our method, we analyzed 88,835 articles published between 2003 and 2010 and found that the Natio

SUBMITTER: Hutchins BI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5012559 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature