Google Scholar Metrics: A New Tool for Faculty to Track

Their Publication Citations

Fu Zhuo

Research & Liaison Librarian

University of Missouri – Kansas City

November 7, 2014 Maryville, Missouri

Google Scholar Metrics

Overview and How It Works

A tool to find most noticeable and significant scholarly publications in a certain subject field.

Top 100 publications in 9 languages are listed in an order by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics with highest numbers coming out first.

Anyone can browse publications in a specific area of research. Select one of the areas in the left column. (e.g. Social Sciences > Subcategories > Educational Administration > “Education and Urban Society”.) However, browsing feature is only for English language so far.

Anyone can search for specific publications in all languages by words in their titles.

Current list of publications were based on its index in June 2014.

What Is h-Index?

“The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each.

For example, a publication with five articles cited by, respectively, 17, 9, 6, 3, and 2, has the h-index of 3.”

Accessed from source Google Scholar Metric “Available metrics” November 4, 2014

What Is h-Score?

“The h-core of a publication is a set of top cited h articles from the publication. These are the articles that the h-index is based on.

For example, the publication above has the h-core with three articles, those cited by 17, 9, and 6.”

Accessed from source Google Scholar Metric “Available metrics” November 4, 2014

What Is h-Median?

“The h-median of a publication is the median of the citation counts in its h-core.

For example, the h-median of the publication above is 9. The h-median is a measure of the distribution of citations to the articles in the h-core.”

Accessed from source Google Scholar Metric “Available metrics” November 4, 2014

What Is Included?

Articles published between 2009 and 2013 and the metrics are based on citations from all articles indexed in Google Scholar in June 2014 including citations from articles that are not themselves covered by Scholar Metrics: 1. Journal articles from websites that follow their

inclusion guidelines; selected conference articles in Computer Science and

Electrical Engineering; preprints from arXiv, SSRN, NBER and RePEC - for these

sites, they compute metrics for individual collections, e.g., "arXiv Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)" or "CEPR Discussion Papers".

Accessed from source Google Scholar Metric “Available metrics” November 4, 2014

What Is Not Included?

Currently excluded: court opinions, patents, books, and dissertations; publications with fewer than 100 articles published

between 2009 and 2013; publications that received no citations to articles

published between 2009 and 2013.

Accessed from source Google Scholar Metric “Available metrics” November 4, 2014

Why Using Google Scholar Metrics?

Find most popular scholarly publications based on citations and h5-index to publish new research results.

Following latest research trends in a certain field from citations.

Track citations of his/her articles in other scholarly publications by clicking on its h-index number to view the articles and the citations underlying the metrics.

Identify which scholarly publication has higher h5-index number and thus publishing there may result in more visibility and impact.

Get familiar with a comprehensive list in a certain subject area and provide guidance to both novice and productive authors

Top 10 Publications in Educational Psychology & Counseling

Title h5-Index h5-median Impact Factor Acceptance Rate

Journal of Educational Psychology

52 74 2.909 17%

Journal of Counseling Psychology

41 49 2.955 18%

Learning and Individual Differences

38 47 2.158 40%

Contemporary Educational Psychology

32 48 3.159 15%

Educational Psychology Review

31 50 2.846 11-20%

Psychology in the schools

31 38 0.566 20%

Educational Psychologist

30 57 4.844 21-30%

School Psychology Review

30 42 2.82 7-15%

British Journal of Educational Psychology

29 45 2.25 11-20%

Journal of School Psychology

28 37 3.470 11-20%Data accessed from Google Scholar Metrics, Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities and each individual journal website 11-5-2014.

Journal of Educational Psychology

Accessed Google Scholar Metrics “Journal of Educational Psychology November 4, 32014.

Useful Notes and Tips

H-index is just one of the ways to evaluate significance of a scholarly publication. Their ranking is based on h index not impact factors. Publications are citation-based, not impact or significance based.

Social Sciences and Humanities are not covered in the top English 100 scholarly publications. Perhaps Google Scholar can list their respective top 100 publications. Currently, only 20 publications are listed each under humanities and social sciences.

Journal acceptance rates are not shown. That information is also useful for any new authors such as undergraduate or graduate students.

Useful Notes and Tips Continued

Only 9-language publications listed. Chinese language scholarly publications do not include those from Taiwan or Singapore. No explanation is given to tell readers whether a language publications include a certain country or countries. But English publications cover both American and British journals.

A large number of articles from smaller publications are not listed in Google Scholar Metrics and they have values too.

Searching full title works better. Abbreviated title may not result in anything or something different from what you need unless the title itself is an abbreviation.

Only some open access journals are included, such as SSRN (Social Science Research Network) and PloS One (Public Library of Science).

Summary

Google Scholar Metrics is an useful tool. Potential authors can use it to find out which scholarly publication has more visibility and influence in a certain field based on h-index. Other authors can use it to track citations of his/her scholarly publications.

However, for those who wish to publish, it would be also helpful to check acceptance rate from Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities, impact factor numbers from Journal Citation Reports and Web of Science for citation numbers.

In the end, librarians should alert their patrons the limitations when recommending Google Scholar Metrics so that other tools such as Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities, Journal Citation Report, or Scopus can be used to find publication opportunities, influence of a publication, and citation information of a certain article.

Thank You

Questions?

Bibliography

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Delgado-López-Cózar, E., & Cabezas-Clavijo, Á. (2013). Ranking journals: Could google scholar metrics be an alternative to journal citation reports and scimago journal rank? Learned Publishing, 26(2), 101-114. doi:10.1087/20130206

Ebrahim, N. A., Salehi, H., Embi, M. A., Danaee, M., Mohammadjafari, M., Zavvari, A., . . . Shahbazi-Moghadam, M. (2014). Equality of google scholar with web of science

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Jacsó, P. (2013). The need for end-user customization of the journal-sets of the subject categories in the SCImago journal ranking database for more appropriate league lists. A case study

for the library & information science field. Profesional De La Informacion, 22(5), 459-473. doi:10.3145/epi.2013.sep.12

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