Unlocking research collaboration | Clarivate – Promoting Educational Development

A new suite of indicators for citation impact analysis to aid accurate interpretation of international comparisons in research assessment is now available in InCites Benchmarking & Analytics.

Accurate assessment and management of research impact is essential for effective and informed decision-making and strategic investment. Analysis of Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) is a widely used method for assessing research impact. This ‘standard’ CNCI approach compares the accumulated citation count for a document to other documents of the same type published in the same year and research area.

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has extensively documented the strengths and limitations of this approach, alongside practical guidance for responsible use of this indicator. Within InCites Benchmarking & Analytics (InCites), CNCI is calculated as the average of CNCI values for research publications attributed to researchers, departments, institutions or regions. Consistent with ISI’s guidance on responsible research evaluation outlined in our report, ’Profiles not metrics’, InCites offers the ability to analyze CNCI Impact Profiles for institutions and locations, as well as CNCI trend graphs by publication year.

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The evolution of Collab-CNCI

Since 2020, ISI has identified and published its findings to demonstrate that collaboration is another systematic component of citation variability: domestic output is, on average, less well cited than internationally co-authored output. This work led to the development of Collaboration-CNCI (Collab-CNCI), which we introduced to the academic community in Interpreting CNCIs on a country-scale (2020). Our report, Making it count: Research credit management in a collaborative world (2022) demonstrates how Collab-CNCI further contributes to the analysis of profiles, rather than metrics. Unpacking research profiles was published in 2023 and in 2024 ISI published a further update on the topic, Tracking changes in CNCI unveiling factors influencing the difference between variations of CNCI.

Collab-CNCI applies one additional step to normalize citation counts. Reference is made to document type, publication year, research area (as in standard CNCI), but also to collaboration type, distinguishing between domestic and international research. As with standard CNCI, Collab-CNCI provides valuable insights into how far a paper, institution, location (or any other entity) deviates from the expected citation rate, now adjusted for collaboration type.

Collab-CNCI is now available across all analysis modules within InCites Benchmarking & Analytics as part of a new suite of collaboration indicators. Research documents can be filtered by five collaboration types as well as overall domestic and international categories. Additionally, domestic and international collaborations can be compared using aggregate Collab-CNCI values, along with corresponding percentages and document totals. Export options with enriched metadata allow for a customized aggregation analysis.

As with the standard CNCI, these new analytics will be applicable on different levels of aggregation such as researchers, organizations, departments and locations.

^{Figure 1: Singapore country-wide research output}

Important considerations for international research evaluation

For stakeholders seeking to analyze research impact, Collab-CNCI provides essential insights into how collaboration influences citation rates. International collaboration is a major driver of citation growth, often surpassing the impact of domestic output. This outcome might remain obscured without a thorough analysis of a broad array of rich multidimensional data. There is a significant warning here: a failure to examine the broader implications of international collaboration data risks a research assessment manager being led down the wrong path. This can result in misguided conclusions and ineffective policy decisions. Breaking down publications and their Collab-CNCI by collaboration type enables research offices, governments and funding organizations to analyze current collaboration patterns and refine their strategies.

Key questions to consider include: How effectively does an institution or country leverage domestic and international collaborations? How closely do their collaboration patterns align with global trends? How stable is their citation impact in the long term?

Regarding the latter, while international collaboration is widely recognized as a driver of higher citation impact, strong domestic collaborations remain foundational for building a sustained research environment. Large multinational (quadrilateral-plus) collaborations, while impactful, can be difficult to establish and maintain in the long run. Therefore, domestic and bi- or trilateral international collaborations often represent a more practical and reliable strategy for fostering long-term growth in citation impact.

As standard CNCI and Collab-CNCI do not normalize citation counts in the exact same manner, face-value comparisons of the two is not meaningful: their insights are complementary. Collab-CNCI factors in the expectation that in a given publication year, document type, research area and collaboration type there will be a likely rise for international collaboration types and fall for domestic ones. This adjustment may lower overall CNCI averages for aggregated entities such as institutions or locations due to the prevalence of international citations. However, a parallel examination of the indicators can build further understanding of what is influencing the increases or decreases from CNCI to Collab-CNCI.

^{Figure 2: Japan international collaborations}

Applying Collab-CNCI to your strategic plans

Using the suite of new collaboration indicators in conjunction with other trusted InCites indicators produces more precise benchmarking, more thoughtful funding alignment and more effective decision-making for academic institutions, governments and funding agencies. Users can now:

Evaluate impact by gaining a balanced view of research collaboration influence versus research quality, revealing true impact drivers.
Balance collaboration partners by maintaining strong domestic and international networks to ensure sustained, resilient research impact over time.
Align policies and investments to prioritize and target research funding to areas where collaborations yield the highest impact.

With a clear understanding of research strengths at the institution or country-level, Collab-CNCI enables research managers to ensure sustainable research growth.

Download our report to gain deeper insights into how international collaboration patterns influence citation performance.

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