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 Harvard Chemistry Harvard · Chemistry 286
2 Princeton Chemistry Princeton · Chemistry 167
3 Dartmouth Government Dartmouth · Political Science 166
4 Columbia Political Science Columbia · Political Science 164
5 Harvard Government Harvard · Political Science 146
6 Yale English Yale · English 146
7 Columbia English Columbia · English 138
8 Columbia Chemistry Columbia · Chemistry 121
9 Penn Political Science Penn · Political Science 110
10 Dartmouth English Dartmouth · English 107
11 Yale Chemistry Yale · Chemistry 106
12 Penn English Penn · English 104
13 Brown English Brown · English 96
14 Penn Chemistry Penn · Chemistry 94
15 Cornell Government Cornell · Political Science 90
16 Princeton Politics Princeton · Political Science 87
17 Cornell Chemistry Cornell · Chemistry 83
18 Brown Chemistry Brown · Chemistry 79
19 Princeton English Princeton · English 76
20 Harvard English Harvard · English 75
21 Yale Political Science Yale · Political Science 72
22 Dartmouth Chemistry Dartmouth · Chemistry 60
23 Brown Political Science Brown · Political Science 57
24 Cornell English Cornell · English 29

805,402 citations over 9,022 of 12,080 works (75% carry a count). 504 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.Harvard ChemistryHarvard Chemistry 286286 · ChemistryPrinceton ChemistryPrinceton Chemistry 167167 · ChemistryDartmouth GovernmentDartmouth Government 166166 · Political ScienceColumbia Political ScienceColumbia Political Science 164164 · Political ScienceHarvard GovernmentHarvard Government 146146 · Political ScienceYale EnglishYale English 146146 · EnglishColumbia EnglishColumbia English 138138 · EnglishColumbia ChemistryColumbia Chemistry 121121 · ChemistryPenn Political SciencePenn Political Science 110110 · Political ScienceDartmouth EnglishDartmouth English 107107 · EnglishYale ChemistryYale Chemistry 106106 · ChemistryPenn EnglishPenn English 104104 · EnglishBrown EnglishBrown English 9696 · EnglishPenn ChemistryPenn Chemistry 9494 · ChemistryCornell GovernmentCornell Government 9090 · Political Science050100150200250DepartmentField index (100 is the median department of its field)

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 81%, Political Science 71%, English 54% 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.01,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,000Political Science Lowest department Brown Political Science 626626Political Science Median department 8 measured 1,0981,098Political Science Highest department Dartmouth Government 1,8191,819Chemistry Lowest department Dartmouth Chemistry 1,2531,253Chemistry Median department 8 measured 2,0712,071Chemistry Highest department Harvard Chemistry 5,9195,919English Lowest department Cornell English 99English Median department 8 measured 3333English Highest department Yale English 4747Political 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 169169 · 3 departmentsColumbiaColumbia 141141 · 3 departmentsDartmouthDartmouth 111111 · 3 departmentsPrincetonPrinceton 110110 · 3 departmentsYaleYale 108108 · 3 departmentsPennPenn 102102 · 3 departmentsBrownBrown 7777 · 3 departmentsCornellCornell 6767 · 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 8181% · 4,665 of 5,756 worksPolitical SciencePolitical Science 7171% · 3,854 of 5,393 worksEnglishEnglish 5454% · 503 of 931 works020406080FieldPer cent of the selected works with a citation count

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 81%, Political Science 71%, English 54% 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.