iCite Product Guide

Posted in: #CC/Academic List, #Health Interest List, #Health Sciences List, Data Science

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iCite was launched in 2015 and is hosted by the National Institute of Health Office of Portfolio Analysis.  The site analyzes bibliometric information at the article, author, and institutional level. iCite uses data collected from the NIH Open Citation collection which includes data from PubMed Central, Medline, Entrez, CrossRef, as well as other sources of open access publications.  iCite has three analysis modules. The Influence module looks at metrics, such as number of publications and citation statistics that are field adjusted and benchmarked to NIH publications. The Translation module looks at the content of an article and if it is more relevant to human, animal, or molecular/cellular biology and provides citation metrics based on those categories. Finally, the Citations module disseminates link-level, public-domain citation data from the NIH Open Citation Collection. People can search for a specific author, university department, or institution. People can also query up to 10,000 PMIDs at a time to look at and compare large groupings of articles.

Key Points:

1. iCite has three powerful modules to understand and create visuals for scholarly impact and bibliometrics.
2. People can use iCite to compare peer to peer bibliometrics (researcher to researcher, institution to institution, etc).
3. iCite uses data from several sources including NIH Open Citation collection, PubMed Central, and Medline.

Considerations:

1. All citation metrics have drawbacks and limitations. Be aware of the limitations when communicating to researchers and faculty about various citation metrics and impact.
2. Recently published articles may have lower citation rates because of the time it takes to produce new scholarly literature. Open access articles and other factors may also influence citation metrics.
3. Relative Ratio Citation (RCR) is a metric developed by the Office of Portfolio Analysis. A paper with an RCR of 1.0 has received the same number of citations per year as the median NIH-funded paper in its field. While an RCR of 1.5 may seem low, that article received an above average number of citations per year compared to other articles in that field.

To download the full product guide created by NNLM Region 3’s Data Strategist, Katie Pierce-Farrier, visit https://nnlm.gov/DmgJw.