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 Dartmouth English Dartmouth · English 500
2 Princeton English Princeton · English 371
3 Harvard Chemistry Harvard · Chemistry 316
4 Columbia English Columbia · English 185
5 Princeton Chemistry Princeton · Chemistry 174
6 Dartmouth Government Dartmouth · Political Science 149
7 Brown Political Science Brown · Political Science 147
8 Columbia Chemistry Columbia · Chemistry 129
9 Yale English Yale · English 124
10 Harvard Government Harvard · Political Science 114
11 Princeton Politics Princeton · Political Science 107
12 Yale Chemistry Yale · Chemistry 101
13 Cornell Chemistry Cornell · Chemistry 99
14 Cornell Government Cornell · Political Science 93
15 Penn Chemistry Penn · Chemistry 92
16 Columbia Political Science Columbia · Political Science 91
17 Penn Political Science Penn · Political Science 85
18 Yale Political Science Yale · Political Science 83
19 Harvard English Harvard · English 76
20 Penn English Penn · English 66
21 Dartmouth Chemistry Dartmouth · Chemistry 63
22 Brown Chemistry Brown · Chemistry 59
23 Brown English Brown · English 38
24 Cornell English Cornell · English 18

148,725 citations over 3,838 of 5,299 works (72% carry a count). 444 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.Dartmouth EnglishDartmouth English 500500 · EnglishPrinceton EnglishPrinceton English 371371 · EnglishHarvard ChemistryHarvard Chemistry 316316 · ChemistryColumbia EnglishColumbia English 185185 · EnglishPrinceton ChemistryPrinceton Chemistry 174174 · ChemistryDartmouth GovernmentDartmouth Government 149149 · Political ScienceBrown Political ScienceBrown Political Science 147147 · Political ScienceColumbia ChemistryColumbia Chemistry 129129 · ChemistryYale EnglishYale English 124124 · EnglishHarvard GovernmentHarvard Government 114114 · Political SciencePrinceton PoliticsPrinceton Politics 107107 · Political ScienceYale ChemistryYale Chemistry 101101 · ChemistryCornell ChemistryCornell Chemistry 9999 · ChemistryCornell GovernmentCornell Government 9393 · Political SciencePenn ChemistryPenn Chemistry 9292 · Chemistry0100200300400DepartmentField index (100 is the median department of its field)

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 78%, Political Science 72%, English 43% 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.02004006008001,0001,200Political Science Lowest department Yale Political Science 181181Political Science Median department 8 measured 219219Political Science Highest department Dartmouth Government 327327Chemistry Lowest department Brown Chemistry 208208Chemistry Median department 8 measured 355355Chemistry Highest department Harvard Chemistry 1,1221,122English Lowest department Cornell English 11English Median department 8 measured 55English Highest department Dartmouth English 2525Political 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.DartmouthDartmouth 237237 · 3 departmentsPrincetonPrinceton 218218 · 3 departmentsHarvardHarvard 169169 · 3 departmentsColumbiaColumbia 135135 · 3 departmentsYaleYale 102102 · 3 departmentsPennPenn 8181 · 3 departmentsBrownBrown 8181 · 3 departmentsCornellCornell 7070 · 3 departments050100150200UniversityMean 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 7878% · 1,873 of 2,399 worksPolitical SciencePolitical Science 7272% · 1,778 of 2,466 worksEnglishEnglish 4343% · 187 of 434 works0204060FieldPer cent of the selected works with a citation count

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 78%, Political Science 72%, English 43% 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.