Learn about the range of tools/metrics that you can use to help understand the influence of your research.

1. Tanya
Williamson,
Assistant
Librarian
MORE THAN YOUR H-INDEX?

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