Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is the statistical study of publications, citations, authorship and collaboration patterns, used to measure research output, influence and the structure of a scientific field. It draws on data from citation databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and, increasingly, open indexes like OpenAlex.

Common bibliometric measures include citation counts, the h-index for individual researchers, the journal impact factor for journals, and co-authorship or co-citation network analysis that maps how fields and institutions relate to one another. This differs from altmetrics, a newer, complementary approach that tracks attention on social media, news and policy documents rather than formal citations, capturing influence that citation counts alone can miss or capture only after a long delay.

Bibliometrics is used by universities and funders for hiring, tenure and grant evaluation, by researchers to find influential prior work, and by publishers to track a journal's standing. The central, widely acknowledged pitfall is that once citation counts and impact factors become targets tied to career outcomes, they create incentives for citation gaming, self-citation and slicing research into the largest possible number of publishable units, which distorts the very signal bibliometrics is meant to measure.