Scopus

You can use Scopus to generate various impact metrics and research analytics, which can be one aspect of assessing the performance or impact of your research. 

• Citation counts: the number of times a research output appears in the reference lists of other articles and books. 
• H-index: designed to measure an author's productivity and impact. It is the number of an author’s publications (h) that have h or more citations to them. 
• Field-weighted citation impact (FWCI): the ratio of citations received relative to the expected average for the subject field, publication type and publication year for works index in Scopus. It can apply to a research output or group of research outputs. 
• Outputs in top percentiles: the number or percentage of research outputs in the top most-cited publications in the world, or a specific country.
• CiteScore: the average number of citations received in a calendar year by all items published in that journal in the proceeding three years.
• PlumX metrics: Examples include research being mentioned in the news or included in a policy citation
• SCImago Journal Rank: places a higher value on citations from more prestigious journals.
• Scopus SNIP: a ratio of a journal's citation count per paper and the citation potential in its subject field. The Scopus SNIP normalises citation rate subject differences.

There are some general rules for using metrics: 

Use the same data source/metric when comparing works, as each metric uses different sources, and sometimes analyses to create the metric. This means that you should not compare a Scopus count for Article A to the Google Scholar count of Article B.  Additionally, do not mix scores across different subject fields as citation behavior varies considerably. 

You should try to use several different metrics, as each metric has its own strengths and weaknesses. 

Include qualitative assessment in addition to numerical metrics. Context is as important as the raw numbers, for example, a high citation count could be due to positive or negative reasons.  

One important resource: 

CiteScore

CiteScore is Scopus' version of the Impact Factor. Scopus describes CiteScore as follows

"CiteScore is a family of eight indicators that offer complementary views to analyze the publication influence of serial titles of interest. Derived from the Scopus database, CiteScore metrics offer a more transparent, current, comprehensive and accurate indication of a serial’s impact. CiteScore metrics are available for 28,000+ active titles, including 15,000+ more than Journal Impact Factor.

CiteScore only includes peer-reviewed research: articles, reviews, conference papers, data papers and book chapters, covering 4 years of citations and publications. Historical data back to CiteScore 2011 have been recalculated and are displayed on Scopus." 

SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) and SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

In addition to CiteScore, Scopus also includes SNIP and SJR as additional journal level metrics. SJR, works similarly to Google PageRank algorithm which uses a "link analysis" approach, where the importance of a page is determined by the quantity and quality of other pages that link to it. With SJR citations from highly selective/prominent (e.g. Nature, JAMA)  journals given more weight than citations from less selective journals.  

SNIP, on the other hand, is a metric that attempts to account for field-specific differences in citation practices. Similar to author metric, Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) SNIP factors in the "citation potential" for each field to provide a standardized metrics intended to allow you to compare journals across disciplines. SNIP and FWCI can be particularly helpful for interdisciplinary researchers to demonstrate the impact of their works if the publish is disciplines with different citation rates.

Create a citation report and calculate your h-index

 Scopus does not have complete citation information for articles published prior to 1970. 

1. Click on the Author search tab on the Scopus homepage.
2. Enter the author's last name and initials or first name into the appropriate search boxes.
3. Enter affiliation information in the search box, if you so choose.
4. Click Search.

5. Select authors to include in citation report:

   • Scopus will display a list of authors that meet your search criteria.  Your name may appear more than once. (see author's section of this guide on merging Scopus profiles) 
6. To view documents for a particular author, click on the box next to the author name and then, click on Show documents at the top of the results (you can also click on their name to view their profile) 
   • If you have more than one profile, you will need to select all of your Scopus Profiles. 
7. Select documents to include in citation report
8. Click Citation overview:
9. Then, click View citation overview at the top of the results
10. The citation overview displays the number of times each document has been cited
11. Click on View h-graph to view the h-index for the documents in the citation overview
12. To export your citation overview, click the Export link in the upper right-hand corner of the page

FWCI (field-weighted citation impact) shows how often a publication is cited compared to the average for similar publications indexed in Scopus. Similar publications are determined by year, type, and discipline.

An FWCI of 1 indicates that the document has performed just as expected for the average. An FWCI of greater than 1 indicates that the document is more cited than expected according to the average.