Distributions instead of single numbers: Percentiles and beam plots for the assessment of single researchers

Citations measure an aspect of scientific quality: the impact of publications (A.F.J. van Raan, 1996). Percentiles normalize the impact of papers with respect to their publication year and field without using the arithmetic average. They are suitable for visualizing the performance of a single scientist. Beam plots make it possible to present the distributions of percentiles in the different publication years combined with the medians from these percentiles within each year and across all years.