The following indicators are used with publications and other content types in Dimensions:
Publication citations
The publication citations value is the number of times that a publication has been cited by other publications in the database. Citing publications can be of any publication type, such as articles, chapters, preprints, or monographs.
Available for: Publications in Dimensions which have been referenced by other publications in Dimensions. References are automatically extracted from the publication metadata and may not always be available.
What are 'publication citations'?
Recent citations
The recent citations value is the number of citations that were received in the last two years. It is currently reset at the beginning of each calendar year.
Available for: Publications in Dimensions which have been referenced by other publications in Dimensions within the last two years. References are automatically extracted from the publication metadata and may not always be available.
Altmetric Attention Score
The Altmetric Attention Score is a weighted count of all of the online attention Altmetric have found for an individual research output. This includes mentions in public policy documents and references in Wikipedia, the mainstream news, social networks, blogs and more. Find out more about the weightings of each source and how they contribute to the attention score.
Available for: Publications and clinical trials in Dimensions which are tracked by Altmetric for mentions.
How is the Altmetric Attention Score calculated?
Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)
The Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) indicates the relative citation performance of an article when comparing its citation rate to that of other articles in its area of research. A value of more than 1.0 shows a citation rate above average. The article’s area of research is defined by the articles that have been cited alongside it.
Available for: Publications in Dimensions which are indexed in MEDLINE (PubMed) and which are at least 2 years old.
What is the RCR? How is the RCR score calculated?
Field Citation Ratio (FCR)
The Field Citation Ratio (FCR) is an article-level metric that indicates the relative citation performance of an article, when compared to similarly-aged articles in its subject area. A value of more than 1.0 indicates higher than average citation, when defined by Field of Research Subject Code, publishing year and age.
Available for: Publications in Dimensions which have been categorised into at least one 4-digit Field of Research, are at least 2 years old and were published in 2000 or later.
What is the FCR and how is it calculated?
Patent citations
Patent citations is the number of times that this record has been cited by other published patents. Patents may be registered in several offices, and this may effect patent citation data.
Available for: Patents in Dimensions which have been referenced by other patents in Dimensions.
Analysing publication indicators in Analytical Views
Dimensions allows you to examine indicators for a single document, or for all of the aggregated results within your search, while providing context, so that you can make the fairest comparison possible, and have multiple views on any query.
Analysing indicator trends as an overview of search results
The 'Overview' tab of the Analytical Views shows a trend over the last ten years (you can select a custom period of up to 50 years via the drop-down) for any indicator from the list above the graph. The potential indicators are listed in the menu, and can be chosen easily to change the graph (below).
When examining 'Citations' there is also the option to view the total, mean average or median average of these, and with 'Publications with citations' there is also the option to view only publications that are above a certain threshold of citation level (see below).
Analysing indicators between subgroups within a search
With any of the other tabs within analytical views apart from 'Overview', aggregated indicator information can be viewed based on the subset of data being examined. For example, how do citations vary within search results when they are Open Access or Closed articles? Or published in different fields of research, journals, or supported by different funders? The metrics available are presented in sets, as seen below -
These sets can be changed, as seen below (please note - you may not see all options in your version of Dimensions, as available options are dependent on subscription level):
These aggregated indicators are presented in groups so that the context is not lost. For example, examining the mean, or median, average Altmetric Attention Score, it is also important to know how many publications from the analysed group has any Altmetric Attention Score at all, otherwise the information could be easily misleading.