Citation metrics are proxy measures of research performance, providing a method to quantify your research output and the level of engagement with your work compared to others. Citation metrics are often provided in grant applications or job applications as evidence of research impact.
These metrics do not provide an indicator of research quality and should be used with care and in conjunction with qualitative measures. Some funders have strict guidelines on the use of metrics in funding applications, always check the grant guidelines for details.
Citation count is the most common article metric. It the number of times it has been cited in the reference list of other articles and books. You can often see 'cited by' in databases including Google Scholar and PubMed.
Altmetrics, or alternative metrics, can be used to complement traditional metrics. Altmetric looks for references to academic publications in non-academic sources such as social media, mainstream media, online reference management tools, policy documents and patents. Altmetrics are an indicator of the online attention received by an article, not an indicator of the quality of the research itself.
Author metrics look at the overall output of a researcher. They include the h-index, h5-index and Field Weighted Citation Impact. Google Scholar Profiles, Scopus and Web of Science are often used to analyse an author's overall publication data.
The widely endorsed San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated.