CiteScore

CiteScore is a bibliometric indicator produced by Elsevier for journals indexed in Scopus. It measures the average number of citations received in a given year to documents published in a journal over the previous four calendar years.

Calculation in year Y follows: CiteScore equals the total citations in year Y to documents published in the journal from year Y-4 to year Y-1, divided by the total number of documents published in the journal in those four years. The numerator includes citations to all documents indexed by Scopus for that journal, while the denominator counts all documents indexed in Scopus for the journal within the same four-year window.

Scope and usage: CiteScore covers journals indexed in Scopus and is updated annually. It is used to compare journals across fields and publishers and serves as one of several metrics in evaluating scholarly outlets. It differs from the Journal Impact Factor in its four-year window and in using all document types indexed by Scopus in the denominator, rather than a predefined set of “citable items.”

Limitations and interpretation: As with other bibliometric indicators, CiteScore has limitations. It can be influenced by field size and citation practices and does not measure the quality of individual articles. Because the denominator includes all document types indexed by Scopus, journals with many non-article publications may have lower scores in some disciplines.

History: CiteScore was introduced by Elsevier in 2016 as part of Scopus’s suite of journal metrics. Related metrics include SNIP and SJR, which use different methodologies to assess journals.