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Using Research Indicators

This guide provides information about indicators that can be used as a measure of research performance

Publications in top journal percentiles

.Publications in Top Journal Percentiles indicates the extent to which an entity’s outputs are present in the most-cited journals in a database source. This metric calculates how many publications, as an absolute count or a percentage, are in the top 1%, 5%, 10% or 25% of the most-cited journals indexed by the database source. An entity can be an institution, a research group or an individual researcher.

The “Percentage” option should be used when comparing entities of different sizes, to normalize for this variable.

The most-cited journals are defined by the journal metrics SNIP (Source-Normalized Impact per Paper) or SJR (SCImago Journal Rank). Both SNIP and SJR are field-normalised, meaning that these metrics can be used to compare journals in the top percentiles, regardless of discipline.

Publications in Top Journal Percentiles is useful for showcasing the presence of publications in journals that are likely to be perceived as prestigious, based on citation data.

Publications in Top Journal Percentiles must be used with caution:

  • A publication may be counted in the top journal percentiles without itself ever having been cited.
  • The citations received by an individual publication are irrelevant for this metric because it is based only on citations received by an entire journal or conference proceedings.

SciVal is the recommended source for calculating Publications in Top Journal Percentiles (listed below).

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