LibGuides: SOM Research Impact: Author Metrics

Common Author Metrics

h-index
g-index

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.

From UC Berkeley

Four great reasons to stop caring so much about the h-index
By Impactstory

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.

From Cornell Libguides

Harzing's Publish or Perish

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).

From Publish or Perish

Contact

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:

In the "Documents" tab, change the dropdown to search by the "Author" field.
Run a search for your author name(s).
In the results screen, click on "Citation Report" (to the right of the search bar).
From here, you can further clean the data, analyze the results, or export the report.

Getting a profile in Web of Science allows you to:

Track citations
Be assigned a Web of Science ResearcherID
Track and update publications on profiles and across Web of Science
Track peer review and journal editing work
Download customizable reports for funding and promotion applications.

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.

Tutorial on Creating a Web of Science Author Profile

Scopus

Scopus allows researchers to analyze citation metrics on authors as well as specific articles by an author.

Author Search: Start by using the "Author Search" tab contained in the "Search" page to locate materials by the author of interest. The more detail you can provide regarding the author, the more precise your search will be, but last name and first initial and/or institutional affiliation are generally the minimum requirements. Scopus uses the "Scopus Author Identifier" to attempt to group documents by the same author, but be aware that a single author may be listed more than once depending on different forms of the name or a change in institutional affiliation. Here is more information about the Author Identifier, and linking it to your ORCID. Once you select the correct author then you can use the analytic tools below.
Citation Overview: After you have completed the "Author Search", tick the box next to the author name(s) to select, and then click on "View citation overview" at the top of the list of names. This will show a table listing the documents by the author(s), and the number of times each article has been cited by year.
Author Evaluator: After you have completed the "Author Search", click on the author's name to go into the author's details page. Next to the listing for "Documents" click on "View Author Evaluator." From here you can examine various aspects of the author's "Documents" including: sources (where published), document types, years of publication, subject areas and co-authors. Other tabs on this page include "Citations" offering a graph of the total number of citations by year of an author's published works and the "h Index" and h-graph.

From University of Arizona

Google Scholar Citations

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.

Adapted from UC Berkeley

Using Google Scholar Citations