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 488
2 Columbia English Columbia · English 395
3 Yale English Yale · English 318
4 Harvard Chemistry Harvard · Chemistry 316
5 Princeton Chemistry Princeton · Chemistry 174
6 Dartmouth Government Dartmouth · Political Science 157
7 Columbia Chemistry Columbia · Chemistry 129
8 Harvard Government Harvard · Political Science 117
9 Princeton Politics Princeton · Political Science 108
10 Cornell Government Cornell · Political Science 106
11 Brown English Brown · English 103
12 Yale Chemistry Yale · Chemistry 101
13 Cornell Chemistry Cornell · Chemistry 99
14 Princeton English Princeton · English 97
15 Columbia Political Science Columbia · Political Science 94
16 Penn Chemistry Penn · Chemistry 92
17 Penn Political Science Penn · Political Science 92
18 Yale Political Science Yale · Political Science 91
19 Penn English Penn · English 71
20 Dartmouth Chemistry Dartmouth · Chemistry 63
21 Brown Chemistry Brown · Chemistry 59
22 Brown Political Science Brown · Political Science 58
23 Harvard English Harvard · English 56
24 Cornell English Cornell · English 10

133,789 citations over 3,659 of 4,983 works (73% carry a count). 431 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 488488 · EnglishColumbia EnglishColumbia English 395395 · EnglishYale EnglishYale English 318318 · EnglishHarvard ChemistryHarvard Chemistry 316316 · ChemistryPrinceton ChemistryPrinceton Chemistry 174174 · ChemistryDartmouth GovernmentDartmouth Government 157157 · Political ScienceColumbia ChemistryColumbia Chemistry 129129 · ChemistryHarvard GovernmentHarvard Government 117117 · Political SciencePrinceton PoliticsPrinceton Politics 108108 · Political ScienceCornell GovernmentCornell Government 106106 · Political ScienceBrown EnglishBrown English 103103 · EnglishYale ChemistryYale Chemistry 101101 · ChemistryCornell ChemistryCornell Chemistry 9999 · ChemistryPrinceton EnglishPrinceton English 9797 · EnglishColumbia Political ScienceColumbia Political Science 9494 · Political Science0100200300400DepartmentField index (100 is the median department of its field)

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 78%, Political Science 72%, English 48% 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 Brown Political Science 106106Political Science Median department 8 measured 184184Political Science Highest department Dartmouth Government 289289Chemistry Lowest department Brown Chemistry 208208Chemistry Median department 8 measured 355355Chemistry Highest department Harvard Chemistry 1,1211,121English Lowest department Cornell English 00English Median department 8 measured 11English Highest department Dartmouth English 66Political 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 236236 · 3 departmentsColumbiaColumbia 206206 · 3 departmentsYaleYale 170170 · 3 departmentsHarvardHarvard 163163 · 3 departmentsPrincetonPrinceton 127127 · 3 departmentsPennPenn 8585 · 3 departmentsBrownBrown 7373 · 3 departmentsCornellCornell 7272 · 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% · 1,872 of 2,395 worksPolitical SciencePolitical Science 7272% · 1,634 of 2,271 worksEnglishEnglish 4848% · 153 of 317 works0204060FieldPer cent of the selected works with a citation count

Coverage differs by field - Chemistry 78%, Political Science 72%, English 48% 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.