Measuring Citation Impact in Non-Indexed Repository-Based Journals: An Investigation of Repository Tools and Proposed Alternatives
Presentation Type
Lightning Talk
Date
2025-11-20
Description
Scholarly journals hosted on library-sponsored institutional repositories (IR) expand publishing alternatives for institutional and external authors. As with other repository content, journal impact is often associated with download counts. In many scholarly areas, however, citation remains the primary metric for which many promotion and tenure requirements include. In addition to providing download usage, Digital Commons, one repository platform owned by Elsevier, also utilizes a metric source provided by another Elsevier company, PlumX. PlumX provides download counts, social media mentions, and citations counts. The citation count in PlumX is a valuable tool for journals that are not indexed in a database, such as Scopus, which measures citation rates. During the process of application for indexing to Scopus for one IR’s longest published journals, we discovered that identifying citations for non-indexed journals in Scopus was possible and searches revealed that the journal had received over 30 citations. However, the PlumX dashboard in Digital Commons showed zero citations. PlumX utilizes CrossRef data from registered DOIs to inform citation rates of journals; however, an article’s references are not a required field. Upon initial inspection, there appeared to be variations in reference data, though presumably complete CrossRef records did not populate citation data in PlumX. Currently, an investigation of this variance is underway with PlumX and CrossRef. In this presentation, I will discuss available findings and provide alternative resources for citation counts that non-indexed journals can incorporate into their impact reporting.
Keywords
MIRL Symposium, 2025 MIRL Symposium, lightning talk
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2025 The Author.
Repository Citation
Brown, Heather, "Measuring Citation Impact in Non-Indexed Repository-Based Journals: An Investigation
of Repository Tools and Proposed Alternatives" (2025). Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries (MIRL) Symposium. 16.
https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/mirl/2025/program/16
Measuring Citation Impact in Non-Indexed Repository-Based Journals: An Investigation of Repository Tools and Proposed Alternatives
Scholarly journals hosted on library-sponsored institutional repositories (IR) expand publishing alternatives for institutional and external authors. As with other repository content, journal impact is often associated with download counts. In many scholarly areas, however, citation remains the primary metric for which many promotion and tenure requirements include. In addition to providing download usage, Digital Commons, one repository platform owned by Elsevier, also utilizes a metric source provided by another Elsevier company, PlumX. PlumX provides download counts, social media mentions, and citations counts. The citation count in PlumX is a valuable tool for journals that are not indexed in a database, such as Scopus, which measures citation rates. During the process of application for indexing to Scopus for one IR’s longest published journals, we discovered that identifying citations for non-indexed journals in Scopus was possible and searches revealed that the journal had received over 30 citations. However, the PlumX dashboard in Digital Commons showed zero citations. PlumX utilizes CrossRef data from registered DOIs to inform citation rates of journals; however, an article’s references are not a required field. Upon initial inspection, there appeared to be variations in reference data, though presumably complete CrossRef records did not populate citation data in PlumX. Currently, an investigation of this variance is underway with PlumX and CrossRef. In this presentation, I will discuss available findings and provide alternative resources for citation counts that non-indexed journals can incorporate into their impact reporting.