Trackademia

Welcome to Trackademia

The idea behind Trackademia is to build on existing academic databases like Google Scholar and OpenAlex so that you can trust the data and use it for whatever you want. That comes down to two things.

More data, and more ways to use it. We aggregate publication data from every major source into a single dataset and add information pulled from faculty CVs. Then we let you slice it however you want: choose which sources to build from, write your own formulas, weight journals, adjust for department size.

More accurate, and honest about where it isn’t. We focus on a smaller set of schools so we can verify everything carefully. Faculty lists come from department websites rather than being inferred from publication records, so we know who should be in the data before we go looking. When we can’t find data on someone, we record the gap instead of dropping them. Every number comes with a coverage rate you can check against ground truth.

Everything in Trackademia is built from seven units. AI merges duplicate records across sources and tags each publication so these categories hold up:

  • Publication — citation counts, authors, journal, peer review status, and more
  • Publication group — versions of the same work combined into one entity, such as a working paper and the article it became
  • Academic
  • Department
  • University
  • Field
  • Journal

There are two modes. In Database mode you browse the underlying records and filter by any of the seven units. In Analytics mode you get graphs and comparisons, and you switch views to compare two departments, compare one department against the average of the others, or see them all at once. Tabs let you focus on a particular level of the data.
Trackademia
Value Statistic Unit

Departments, across fields

Field index · the median department of each field is 100
1 Cornell English Cornell · English 267
2 Harvard Government Harvard · Political Science 252
3 Columbia Political Science Columbia · Political Science 232
4 Princeton English Princeton · English 217
5 Harvard Chemistry Harvard · Chemistry 196
6 Princeton Chemistry Princeton · Chemistry 171
7 Yale Chemistry Yale · Chemistry 164
8 Penn Political Science Penn · Political Science 135
9 Columbia English Columbia · English 127
10 Brown Chemistry Brown · Chemistry 110
11 Brown English Brown · English 105
12 Dartmouth Government Dartmouth · Political Science 102
13 Princeton Politics Princeton · Political Science 98
14 Yale English Yale · English 95
15 Yale Political Science Yale · Political Science 91
16 Penn Chemistry Penn · Chemistry 90
17 Columbia Chemistry Columbia · Chemistry 85
18 Penn English Penn · English 63
19 Harvard English Harvard · English 61
20 Brown Political Science Brown · Political Science 57
21 Cornell Chemistry Cornell · Chemistry 51
22 Cornell Government Cornell · Political Science 50
23 Dartmouth English Dartmouth · English 42
24 Dartmouth Chemistry Dartmouth · Chemistry 42

4,090,694 citations over 24,924 of 32,859 works (76% carry a count). 542 of 772 academics have at least one counted work. A work with no citation count is unknown here, never a zero.

Field index by department

Citations per academic against the field median
Series: value.Cornell EnglishCornell English 267267 · EnglishHarvard GovernmentHarvard Government 252252 · Political ScienceColumbia Political ScienceColumbia Political Science 232232 · Political SciencePrinceton EnglishPrinceton English 217217 · EnglishHarvard ChemistryHarvard Chemistry 196196 · ChemistryPrinceton ChemistryPrinceton Chemistry 171171 · ChemistryYale ChemistryYale Chemistry 164164 · ChemistryPenn Political SciencePenn Political Science 135135 · Political ScienceColumbia EnglishColumbia English 127127 · EnglishBrown ChemistryBrown Chemistry 110110 · ChemistryBrown EnglishBrown English 105105 · EnglishDartmouth GovernmentDartmouth Government 102102 · Political SciencePrinceton PoliticsPrinceton Politics 9898 · Political ScienceYale EnglishYale English 9595 · EnglishYale Political ScienceYale Political Science 9191 · Political Science050100150200250DepartmentField index (100 is the median department of its field)

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 84%, Political Science 71%, English 57% of the selected works carry a citation count - so the index compares standing within a field and never absolute impact across fields.

Notes

A department’s index is its citations per academic divided by the median citations per academic of the departments of its own field, times 100. The median is over the departments these filters keep, so narrowing to three departments of a field moves the field’s own middle.

Raw citations only (docs/ui-redesign.md section 5): the citation weighting and the publication count do not move this tab. The statistic and the unit do.

The 15 highest of 24 departments; the list above holds them all.

Citations per academic by field

Where each field’s departments sit on citations per academic
Statistic Unit
Series: Lowest department, Median department, Highest department.05,00010,00015,00020,000Political Science Lowest department Cornell Government 2,4442,444Political Science Median department 8 measured 4,9014,901Political Science Highest department Harvard Government 12,34512,345Chemistry Lowest department Dartmouth Chemistry 4,1614,161Chemistry Median department 8 measured 10,02310,023Chemistry Highest department Harvard Chemistry 19,67019,670English Lowest department Dartmouth English 142142English Median department 8 measured 337337English Highest department Cornell English 900900Political ScienceChemistryEnglishCitations per academicField

Lowest departmentMedian departmentHighest department

The spread of the departments inside each field, on one axis: the middle bar is the median that anchors that field’s index, and the distance between the outer two is what an index of 120 is measured against.

University rollup

The mean index of a university’s departments
Series: value.HarvardHarvard 170170 · 3 departmentsPrincetonPrinceton 162162 · 3 departmentsColumbiaColumbia 148148 · 3 departmentsCornellCornell 123123 · 3 departmentsYaleYale 116116 · 3 departmentsPennPenn 9696 · 3 departmentsBrownBrown 9191 · 3 departmentsDartmouthDartmouth 6262 · 3 departments050100150UniversityMean field index

Each university’s departments averaged on the index, which is the only figure of theirs that crosses fields. A department with no index is out of the mean and the end of the bar says how many were in it.

Coverage by field

Works carrying a citation count
Series: value.ChemistryChemistry 8484% · 13,007 of 15,497 worksPolitical SciencePolitical Science 7171% · 10,091 of 14,158 worksEnglishEnglish 5757% · 1,826 of 3,204 works020406080FieldPer cent of the selected works with a citation count

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 84%, Political Science 71%, English 57% of the selected works carry a citation count - so the index compares standing within a field and never absolute impact across fields.

Notes

A work takes its verified Scholar profile’s count, else OpenAlex’s; a work with neither is unknown and is never filled in with a zero (docs/definitions.md section 6). Books and chapters are covered worst, which is why the fields that write them sit lowest here.