InCites Benchmarking & Analytics (InCites) is a paid analysis tool produced by Clarivate Analytics, which allows users to carry out a complex analysis based on the Web of Science (WoS) publication data. InCites’s data is based on the content of WoS Core Collection databases since 1980. The users of the InCites service can utilise all Core Collection databases in their analyses, regardless of their licence agreements. WoS data is updated into InCites with a delay of a few months.
Carrying out analyses in InCites is based on using its diverse filters. The same filters are available in all six different analysis perspectives as well as the same publication time period, from 1980 to the current day. Filters allow you to determine whether you want to review the performance of a certain research organisation based on the publications or whether you want to do collaboration or comparison analyses, for example. You can use a ready-made dataset from InCites as the base data of your analysis or prepare and transfer a dataset by yourself. Datasets can be uploaded either from the WoS database or uploaded to the service as a CSV or TXT file. However, it should be noted that only the publication records that have been indexed in the WoS Core Collection databases will transfer to the InCites dataset. Using self-made datasets allows, for example, for organisations to be reviewed at more specific hierarchical levels, such as by faculty, department or research group.
Figure 1. InCites characteristics and functionalities in the ‘Organizations’ analysis view. © Clarivate, 2020.
Subjects of analysis
InCites allows for analyses to be carried out from six different perspectives, i.e. analysis types:
Researchers: allows the publication production of millions of different researchers to be analysed. The tool can give answers to questions such as who are the most productive researchers in terms of publications in a certain field of science, country or organisation. The tool also allows users to analyse collaboration between researchers through their co-publications and check whether the publications written together have received more or fewer citations than average.
The InCites researcher profiles aim to recognise publications belonging to a certain person by taking into account not only their name but also their affiliation information, publication history, the subject area of their publications, and co-authors of their publications as well as by utilising the researcher IDs maintained by the authors and the publications linked to these. However, it has not really been able to recognise the information of each and every researcher correctly, and the service features many publications that have not been connected to their correct author. The problem is especially prevalent for Asian names, because it has not been possible to identify publications for the correct author due to the extent of names.
Organizations: allows the user to view the information of nearly 16,000 organisations recognised by InCites. With this tool, you can view, for example, the publication data of an individual organisation, select all research organisations in a certain country for a review, compare the publication information of organisations with each other or review potential collaboration between organisations through co-publications. In addition, the Organizations view allows to review the results of Clarivates' reputation surveys for research organisations.
The organisation profiles are based on the WoS Organization-Enhanced profiles. All the name variants of individual organisations have been taken into account in these profiles. Organisations themselves are able to ensure the accuracy of their Organization-Enhanced profiles and keep them up-to-date. Organisations without an WoS Organization-Enhanced profile are not included in the InCites Organizations view. The publications of these organisations can be found in the tool, but they have not been linked to any organisation.
Regions: allows users to analyse the publication outputs of different countries and geographic areas. The tool allows you to explore the publishing activity of a certain country, compare different countries with each other or review cross-border collaboration through co-publications. By using filters, the data can also be limited to a certain organisation, which makes it possible to analyse the collaboration between the organisation and a certain country.
Research areas: allows for more detailed field-specific reviews. You can select different field of science classifications for the review. In addition to the Web of Science’s own classification, you can choose from systems such as OECD, UK REF and the publication-level classification system produced by Leiden University’s CWTS department.
Publication sources: allows for a more detailed review of journals, books and conference publications that are part of the WoS Core Collection. You can use this tool to find out, for example, which publication channels the researchers of certain country or organisation use the most or which publication channels they cite most frequently.
Funding agencies: allows for publications and the parties providing funding for them to be analysed. This tool helps you review whether publications funded by a certain funder have been cited less or more than average or how many publications have been produced within a certain project, for example. However, it should be taken into account that the WoS Core Collection databases started to collect funding information as late as in 2008, depending on the database, and the information is partly incomplete.
Indicators
InCites offers more than 80 different indicators that help you review the productivity, impact and collaboration of the chosen entity. The service also allows you to review the results of reputation surveys performed with Clarivates’s research organisations. The indicators used in the service are internationally used, established indicators used to measure research outputs, such as the numbers of publications, Open Access publications, international co-publications and their citation numbers and shares, field-normalised and journal-normalised citation indicators and Top X% indicators.
When calculating the indicators, please note that InCites does not have the option to remove self-citations. It is also not possible for the user to determine the citation time window. The citations are calculated from the time reviewed to the current moment. For example, when analysing a set of publications published in 2010–2015, the citation numbers and citation-based indicators will be calculated according to the number of citations at the time of calculation.
This guide’s chapter on indicators has more information on the individual key indicators. InCites also has a separate Indicators Handbook that has detailed descriptions of the functions of every available indicator.
Classification of fields of science
The InCites tool applies the WoS’s own Research Areas classification by default. Additionally, InCites offers many other multidisciplinary classification systems applied nationally and internationally. The key classifications are Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Field of Research (FoR), ANVUR Category Scheme, Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKEN), UK REF 2014 and 2021, and OECD’s classification.
Additionally, a publication-level classification of the field of science by the CWTS institution of Leiden University is available. It classifies all individual publications in the WoS Core Collection databases since 1980 into a three-tier publication-based classification system with the help of algorithms. The most exact, there are more than 2400 micro level citation topics. This ‘Leiden Algorithm’ developed by CWTS has been presented in more detail in the article: Traag, V.A., Waltman, L. & van Eck, N.J. From Louvain to Leiden: guaranteeing well-connected communities. Sci Rep 9, 5233 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41695-z. All the different classifications of the fields of science in InCites are available for use in all the six analysis views of the tool’s .
You can read more about the field classifications and their significance in publication metrics in the chapter Differences between fields of science.
Presenting, sharing and saving options for results
All analyses carried out with the InCites tool can be presented in a table or as a visual presentation in the service’s own user interface. The visualisation can be chosen based on what is best suited to your purposes, with options such as traditional pie charts and bar charts, trend curves and a geographic map visualisation. The results can also be imported in CSV format for further processing. Additionally, users can save report templates in InCites and share them with other users.
Limitations of the tool
Availability is the key limitation, as using InCites is subject to a charge. The price of the annual licence depends on the size of the organisation.
Another major limiting factor is the coverage of the data in the service. Because InCites uses the WoS Core Collection as its base data, the coverage of data in certain fields of science remains low. You can read more about the topic in the chapter Web of Science. It should also be noted that InCites only contains the WoS Core Collection publication data from 1980 and forward.
The InCites tool also has some technical limitations. The maximum size of datasets made by users is 50,000 records. Removing self-citations is not possible in the tool and the user cannot determine the time period of citations. The citations will be calculated from the time reviewed to the current day. Some of the researcher profiles are incorrect, and organisation and funder data also has inaccuracies. In particular, the affiliation information of companies indexed in the publications contains deficiencies, which reduces the reliability of indicators measuring the corporate collaboration.
Useful instruction sites
You can find useful instructions for creating reports and analyses with InCites as well as useful information about the functionalities of the service by visiting the service provider’s LibGuides page and the InCites Indicators Handbook.
Sources
Clarivates (2022) InCites Help. [online] Available: https://incites.help.clarivate.com/Content/home.htm [Accessed 21.1.2022]
Clarivates (2020) InCites at a Glance [figure]. Available: https://clarivate.libguides.com/incites_ba [Accessed 21.1.2022]
Traag, V.A., Waltman, L. and van Eck, N.J. (2019) From Louvain to Leiden: guaranteeing well-connected communities. Scientific Reports 9, p. 5233. Available: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41695-z