When presenting publication and citation metrics, it is important to state the time frame that metrics refer to e.g. when benchmarking individual researchers, the year of first publication must be stated. It is also important to state the database source.
Counts of Scholarly Outputs will vary between sources, and there is no database with comprehensive coverage of all outputs. Comparisons of number of Scholarly Outputs should therefore only be made from the same source.
The number of citations recorded for a publication depends on the source database. This is because only the citations from articles indexed in the same database will be recorded. Because the publications (e.g. journals, books, book chapters, conference proceedings) indexed in a database will vary, the number of citations recorded for each output will also vary between databases. Therefore, when benchmarking research entities with citation metrics, a single source should be used.
Citation metrics for the same publication(s) will vary between database sources.This is because only the outputs indexed in a database will be included in a citation calculation from that data source, and citation data sources will vary in their coverage of outputs and there is no data source that will have comprehensive coverage of all outputs. Comparisons should only be made from the same source.