A measure of the cumulative impact of a researcher's publications that attempts to measure both quantity (number of publications) and quality (number of citations).
The h-index is the number of papers (h) that have received h or more citations. An h-index of 3 means that an author has 3 papers that have each received at least 3 citations. The h-index is the most widely used single metric of an author's research output.
While the h-index is widely used, it has many critics - a common criticism is that it is not an accurate measure for early-career researchers. Moreover, Because databases like Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar differ in the content that they include, it is likely that your citation counts, and even your h-index, will be different depending on which database you use. Generally, Web of Science is considered a more authoritative h-index provider. Variations on the h-index have been developed that attempt to address its limitations.
The G-index was proposed by Leo Egghe in his paper "Theory and Practice of the G-Index" in 2006 as an improvement on the H-Index.
G-Index is calculated this way: "[Given a set of articles] ranked in decreasing order of the number of citations that they received, the G-Index is the (unique) largest number such that the top g articles received (together) at least g^2 citations." (from Harzig's Publish or Perish Manual)
The G-Index remains controversial and may not be as widely accepted as the H-index.
Publish or Perish is a free downloadable software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses a variety of data sources to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and presents a range of citation metrics, including the number of papers, total citations and the h-index.
The results are available on-screen and can also be copied to the Windows or macOS clipboard (for pasting into other applications) or saved to a variety of output formats (for future reference or further analysis).
If you would like help creating metrics reports for a researcher, lab group or unit, have questions about metrics or accessing the tools in this guide, or would like guidance on metrics not discussed in this guide, please contact:
Lena Bohman, Data Services and Research Impact Librarian, lena.g.bohman@hofstra.edu
From the Web of Science home page:
Getting a profile in Web of Science allows you to:
You can populate your Web of Science profile using your ORCID profile. Refer to the Clarivate tutorial below for steps on creating your Researcher Profile.
Scopus allows researchers to analyze citation metrics on authors as well as specific articles by an author.
Set up an author profile in Google Scholar Citations and you can view citation metrics for your publications and get an email alert every time one of your publications is cited. You can also view your h-index in your profile. Publications like theses, books, and reports that might not be included in Scopus or Web of Science can be added in Google Scholar and will contribute to your citation count. However, you should check data in Google Scholar carefully, since it can be more prone to errors and duplication.
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