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 285
2 Penn English Penn · English 220
3 Yale English Yale · English 216
4 Columbia English Columbia · English 190
5 Dartmouth Government Dartmouth · Political Science 174
6 Columbia Political Science Columbia · Political Science 169
7 Princeton Chemistry Princeton · Chemistry 166
8 Harvard Government Harvard · Political Science 127
9 Brown English Brown · English 117
10 Columbia Chemistry Columbia · Chemistry 115
11 Penn Political Science Penn · Political Science 108
12 Yale Chemistry Yale · Chemistry 106
13 Penn Chemistry Penn · Chemistry 94
14 Cornell Government Cornell · Political Science 92
15 Dartmouth English Dartmouth · English 83
16 Cornell Chemistry Cornell · Chemistry 83
17 Princeton Politics Princeton · Political Science 83
18 Brown Chemistry Brown · Chemistry 79
19 Princeton English Princeton · English 71
20 Yale Political Science Yale · Political Science 67
21 Dartmouth Chemistry Dartmouth · Chemistry 60
22 Harvard English Harvard · English 39
23 Brown Political Science Brown · Political Science 37
24 Cornell English Cornell · English 30

745,185 citations over 8,548 of 11,364 works (75% carry a count). 493 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 285285 · ChemistryPenn EnglishPenn English 220220 · EnglishYale EnglishYale English 216216 · EnglishColumbia EnglishColumbia English 190190 · EnglishDartmouth GovernmentDartmouth Government 174174 · Political ScienceColumbia Political ScienceColumbia Political Science 169169 · Political SciencePrinceton ChemistryPrinceton Chemistry 166166 · ChemistryHarvard GovernmentHarvard Government 127127 · Political ScienceBrown EnglishBrown English 117117 · EnglishColumbia ChemistryColumbia Chemistry 115115 · ChemistryPenn Political SciencePenn Political Science 108108 · Political ScienceYale ChemistryYale Chemistry 106106 · ChemistryPenn ChemistryPenn Chemistry 9494 · ChemistryCornell GovernmentCornell Government 9292 · Political ScienceDartmouth EnglishDartmouth English 8383 · English050100150200250DepartmentField index (100 is the median department of its field)

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 81%, 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.01,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,000Political Science Lowest department Brown Political Science 362362Political Science Median department 8 measured 977977Political Science Highest department Dartmouth Government 1,7041,704Chemistry Lowest department Dartmouth Chemistry 1,2531,253Chemistry Median department 8 measured 2,0712,071Chemistry Highest department Harvard Chemistry 5,9105,910English Lowest department Cornell English 33English Median department 8 measured 1010English Highest department Penn English 2121Political 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.ColumbiaColumbia 158158 · 3 departmentsHarvardHarvard 151151 · 3 departmentsPennPenn 141141 · 3 departmentsYaleYale 130130 · 3 departmentsPrincetonPrinceton 106106 · 3 departmentsDartmouthDartmouth 106106 · 3 departmentsBrownBrown 7878 · 3 departmentsCornellCornell 6868 · 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% · 4,656 of 5,744 worksPolitical SciencePolitical Science 7171% · 3,494 of 4,923 worksEnglishEnglish 5757% · 398 of 697 works020406080FieldPer cent of the selected works with a citation count

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 81%, 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.