Bringing Smart Citations to Rankings
For far too long, researchers, universities, and academics have relied on simple citation counts to measure the importance of scientific work. The Impact Factor, h-Index, G-index, all use this simple approach. The Times Higher Education, Shanghai Rankings, and QS World University Rankings include citation data in their university rankings. Clearly, citations represent an important component of ranking any scholarly entity, from journals to entire universities.
Unfortunately, this method suffers from a lack of nuance: a citation that reports a failure to replicate a key finding is treated the same as a citation that reports a successful replication. Now, thanks to a powerful new approach called Scite Rankings, we finally have a better way to address this shortcoming.
Scite Smart Citations use AI to classify scholarly citations as supporting, contrasting, or simply mentioning the paper they cite. To date, we have classified 1.4 billion citation statements from over 38 million scholarly papers. We are now pleased to present our first annual rankings report for fields, institutions, and journals. This is the first rankings scheme to go beyond simple counts of citations and incorporate intelligence about the content of the citations.
Our rankings are based on the Scite Index an entity receives. A Scite Index is computed based on a combination of references (the number of papers that reference a journal, paper associated with a university, etc.), and Scite’s Smart Citations, providing a more complete picture of how an entity’s works have been received by other researchers.
While many of the key players are similarly placed (i.e., many well-known institutions in the top 10 of Scite’s rankings are also in the top 10 research rankings from other providers), this approach results in some significant differences. For example, the University of Michigan ranks 21 on Shanghai’s 2024 rankings (ranked by number of publications), and 47 on the Times Higher Education’s 2025 rankings (ranked by their Research Quality indicator). However, UM is ranked 8 in Scite’s rankings, due in part to supporting citations to papers published by authors affiliated with it.
For example, consider How Does it STAC Up? Revisiting the Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition, a paper authored by UM's Michael I Posner Collegiate Professor of Psychology, Patricia A. Reuter‐Lorenz, and published in 2014 in the journal Neuropsychology Review. This work received 15 supporting citations and no contrasting citations in 2024. While this paper received 119 references during that same period (a relatively modest number), the high amount of support it received increases its Scite Index value, which, in turn, increases the overall rank of the University of Michigan in 2024.
It’s time to move beyond citation counts and bring true intelligence into the way we evaluate scientific impact. With Scite’s Smart Citations and the Scite Index, we’re ushering in a new era of rankings. Check out our rankings, and read our paper for more details on our methodology.
