Article Quality Indicator: Proposing a New Indicator for Measuring Article Quality in Scopus and Web of Science

For different aims in science policy, careful analysis of the academic articles and their quality and quantity based on acceptable criteria seems indispensable. This study endeavored to introduce and use an indicator which can combine essential factors that may exert influence on the quality of articles in Scopus and Web of Science databases. Such factors as journal rank, citations without self-citations, citing journals quality, cited journals quality, citing to top articles and authors’ h-index which might affect quality of articles were extracted from literature. To identify the weight of each factor, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was employed and the experts’ points of view on scientometrics were elicited as well. Then, the weights of each of these factors were set in the Article Quality Indicator (AQI) formula. The weight of each factor is as follows: Citations without Self Citations (0.235), Journal Rank (0.201), Citing to Top Articles (0.194), Citing Journals Rank (0.148), Cited Journals Rank (0.132) and Authors h-Index (0.086). To examine the indicator, the articles in the field of Medical Ethics were selected and the factors for 48 articles were extracted. Results revealed that with using the proposed indicator, the highest value of the AQI was 3.25 and the lowest was 0.01. Interestingly, regarding these properties as well as taking all the facets into account along with calculating their weights based on experts’ views; the successful testing of the formula resulted in a reliable indicator. And, the indicator can be used as complementary to other one-dimensional indicators or as a replacement of them. This way, it can be proposed to be capitalized on for policy making in academia and research. Regarding the calculation of this indicator for articles through databases, due to its characteristic features and comprehensiveness, this indicator can be an appropriate option to make research policies based on a variety of components.