Last updated: February 16, 2023

Reference Citation Analysis’s evaluation process for certification of scholars

Reference Citation Analysis (RCA) is an artificial intelligence technology-based open multidisciplinary citation analysis database (https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/). It was carefully designed to lead the development of wisdom, knowledge innovation, and emerging disciplines. As such, the functions of RCA include: Find an Article, Find a Category, Find a Journal, Find a Scholar, and Find an Academic Assistant. RCA updates its list of scholars daily, according to relevant data including total number of articles, total citations, and Article Influence Index (AII). RCA acquires newly released abstracts and references from Crossref and adds them to the RCA database weekly. RCA also acquires abstracts and references released within the calendar year from Crossref and adds them to the RCA database monthly, and then updates the total number of articles, citations, and AII accordingly.

The RCA’s mission, the openness and transparency of RCA evaluation, the calculation method of AII, and the evaluation process of RCA scholars are described below:

1 RCA’S MISSION

The mission of RCA is to provide a high-quality academic article evaluation service platform for various categories. At present, there are many evaluation methods for academic articles, but their calculation methods are complicated. RCA as a new generation method of evaluating the quality of academic articles, allows for making an academic evaluation of journals, scholars, institutions, drugs, medical devices, and publishers based on the JAII of each article in the citation analysis database, thus greatly enriching the academic evaluation systems across different disciplines and guiding the healthy development of the academic community.

2 OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY OF RCA EVALUATION

RCA is unique in its objective, impartial, fair, and transparent release of citation analysis data of important academic journals to authors and readers, including evaluation data, evaluation indexes, evaluation methods, and evaluation results, so as to ensure the reliability of academic evaluation.

3 CALCULATION METHOD OF AII and DATA UPDATE

The AII, calculated as Total citations/Total articles, is not a 2-year nor 5-year average of citations, but is an average of citations for all articles of a scholar. Article types are not only limited to original articles and review articles, but for all types of articles. In this way, it is a more objective, fair, and transparent calculation of the academic influence index of a scholar. The RCA updates the article data of scholars weekly, including total number of articles, total citations, and AII.

4 EVALUATION PROCESS OF RCA SCHOLARS

The scholars included in the RCA core scholars list need to undergo three rounds of strict evaluation. The evaluation process is as follows:

First-round evaluation: The general information of the scholar is verified, including Name, Professional Designations(s), Job Title/Position, Research Domain, Research Keywords, Biography, Institution URL, Institution, Photo, Social Media URLs, and Academic Activity. Usually, RCA scholars must have MD or PhD degree, and the job title/position must be at least Associate Professor, Associate Chief Physician or Associate Researcher, or above.

Second-round evaluation: The academic quality of the scholar’s published articles is verified according to the list of articles imported by the RCA registration user, including whether the imported articles are published by the scholars themselves and whether the author information of the articles is correct. After the evaluation, scholars will be notified to verify the correctness of the information in the article.

Third-round evaluation: Based on the reliability of scholar’s general information, the number of scholar’s published articles, the distribution of publications, the number of citations of articles, and AII, the RCA editorial team evaluates every scholar, makes the decision to accept or reject the scholar, and create a list of core scholars by research categories.

The functions of the RCA certified (RCAC, Figure 1) scholar list is to (1) classify scholars according to categories and rank them according to various bibliometrics, including total view, AII, total citations, cited by in F6publishing, total articles, and number of years; and (2) provide a website platform for each RCAC scholar to display scholar’s name, RCA ID, personal RCA site address, research domain, research keywords, biography, total view, total journal(s), total articles, total citations, cited by in F6publishing, AII, institution URL, institution, scholar’s citation analysis list, ranked by (impact index per article, cited by in Crossref, and cited by in F6publishing), results analysis (year published analysis, article type analysis, journal title analysis, category analysis, and citation analysis), year published, article type, journal title, and category (Figure 2).

Figure 1 RCA certified logo. RCAC: RCA certified.

Figure 2 Home page of RCA’s Find a Scholar service.

   RCA is a new generation of impartial, fair, open, and transparent method for the third-party quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the quality of academic articles of scholars based on the impact index of each article in the reference citation analysis database. The ultimate purpose of RCA is to provide scholars with permanent RCA ID and personal network sharing website. The scholars’ personal RCA site provides scholars with a platform for academic exchange that integrates social media and network sharing, thus helping to expand the global academic influence of scholars' articles and leading the healthy development of academic exchange ideas.

RCA Home Page: https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/

RCA Scholar List: https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/searchscholar

RCA Author Register: https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/AuthorRegist