The number behind the number: suggesting a truer measure of academic impact

The limitations of simple ‘citation count’ figures are well-known. Chris Carroll argues that the impact of an academic research paper might be better measured by counting the number of times it is cited within citing publications rather than by simply measuring if it has been cited or not. Three or more citations of the key paper arguably represent a rather different level of impact than a single citation. By looking for this easily generated number, every researcher can quickly gain a greater insight into the impact (or not) of their published work.