Citations per Paper (Indicator)

Citations per Paper is an Indicator used in the following rankings:

• QS Arab Region Rankings
• QS Asia Region Rankings
• QS Europe Region Rankings
• QS Latin America and Caribbean Region Rankings
• QS Subject Rankings

It forms part of the Research and Discovery lens.

Below you can find the weighting(s) for the indicator. Weightings are reviewed on an annual basis.

The data used for this indicator is drawn from Elsevier's Scopus research database. Scopus is a source-neutral abstract and citation database curated by independent subject matter experts.

An extract is provided to us in Q1 of each year which is used for the new cycle of each ranking, beginning with the World University Rankings.

Data is from two distinct datasets:

• paper count over a five-year period;
• citations count for six years for papers published over a five-year period.

In University Rankings by Region, a minimum of 100 papers are required to be evaluated in this indicator. This is applied to eliminate anomalous low numbers of papers from overly benefiting small institutions. Also, there are paper thresholds per subject in our Subject Rankings.

Both citations and papers are processed within our regular procedures, excluding faculty area normalization in Subject Rankings.

Additionally, in Subject Rankings citations yielded by papers published in niche journals (with only one ASJC code attributed by Elsevier) carry extra (double) weight. On top of that, institutions with low paper counts have reduced citation count on a sliding scale up to 10 times the paper threshold for a specific subject.

We apply the following adjustments to the papers and citations we index:

Affiliation Cap

The cap is variable and calculated individually for each QS subject, ensuring no more than 0.1% (0.001) of research is excluded in a given field.

Paper-type exclusions

We exclude certain content types from our analysis. These types are defined by Elsevier Scopus. You can see the included and excluded types below under 'Definitions'.

Self-citations exclusion

We exclude citation of an author’s own work by said author. We use an author-level definition of self-citations, as opposed to a journal-level or institution-level definition.

Faculty area normalization

In the QS World University Rankings and QS University Rankings by Region), we equalize the influence of research in our five key faculty areas, so that each contributes 20% to the final indicator.

Paper Definitions

We exclude certain content types from our analysis. These types are defined by Elsevier Scopus. You can see the included and excluded lists below.