  Evaluating and comparing the academic performance of a journal, a researcher
or a single paper has long remained a critical, necessary but also
controversial issue. Most of existing metrics invalidate comparison across
different fields of science or even between different types of papers in the
same field. This paper proposes a new metric, called return on citation (ROC),
which is simply a citation ratio but applies to evaluating the paper, the
journal and the researcher in a consistent way, allowing comparison across
different fields of science and between different types of papers and
discouraging unnecessary and coercive/self-citation.
