2. Journal articles published
by an author
Citations to journal articles
published by an author
An attempt to generate a
quantitative representation
of a scholar’s ‘output’
WHAT ARE AUTHOR BIBLIOMETRICS?
The h-index: If a scholar has 20 articles
which have each been cited 20 times, s/he
has an h-index of 20
Times cited: Total citations to all of an
author’s works
Average citations per item: Total
citations/Total items
3. Universities are often looking for a
quick way to evaluate performance
(productivity and impact)
The h-index is easy to calculate and
understand, so has gained traction
You may gain insights into your
own influence
You may find potential
collaborators
WHY SHOULD I CARE?
4. Google Scholar
Web of Science
Scopus
Publish or Perish: free application. Uses data from Google
Scholar to calculate a wide range of author metrics, including
improvements to the h-index that attempt adjust for:
Length of career
Highly cited papers
Active vs inactive researchers
Co-authorship
HOW TO FIND YOUR H-INDEX (and other
metrics)?
5. Can’t be used fairly to compare across disciplines, or
meaningfully in some disciplines
Name ambiguity – getting a comprehensive list is not easy
Values differ depending on the source data
No one metric can capture all ‘impacts’, or facets of
‘research performance’
Will not be favourable if your research does not result in journal
articles
Early career researchers will be at a disadvantage
Citations ≠ endorsements of quality!
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE H-INDEX (and
other metrics)?
6. Consider what is the most appropriate measure for you, your
discipline and the impact you were aiming to achieve
Article-level metrics: include views, downloads AND citations
Emerging:
Altmetrics, such as ImpactStory and Altmetric.com to get a
broader picture of the attention that your (digital) research
outputs receive
Data citation counts
WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?
Four reasons to stop
caring about the h-
index by ImpactStory
7. Harzing, A.W. (2007) Publish or Perish, available from
http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's
scientific research output. Proceedings of the National
academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, 102(46), 16569-16572.
Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., de Rijcke, S., & Rafols, I.
(2015). The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. Nature,
520, 429-431.
REFERENCES