The Citation Race: How emerging trends are reshaping academic metrics : Progress, pitfalls, and insights (2026)
In an era where data drives decisions, academic success is often distilled into numbers—citations, impact factors, and h-indexes. Yet, the landscape of research evaluation is rapidly evolving. The Citation Race: How Emerging Trends Are Reshaping Academic Metrics explores how open access publishing, digital scholarship, and alternative metrics (altmetrics) are transforming the ways in which scholarly impact is measured and valued. As academia moves beyond traditional citation counts toward more inclusive and multidimensional indicators, this shift raises critical questions about fairness, accessibility, and the true meaning of research