Tanya Will iamson, Assistant Librarian

MORE THAN YOUR H-INDEX?

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 20Times cited: Total citations to all of an author’s worksAverage citations per item: Total citations/Total items

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?

Google ScholarWeb of ScienceScopusPublish 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)?

Can’t be used fairly to compare across disciplines, or meaningfully in some disciplines

Name ambiguity – getting a comprehensive list is not easy

Values diff er depending on the source dataNo one metric can capture all ‘impacts’, or facets of

‘research performance’ Will not be favourable if your research does not result in

journal articlesEarly career researchers will be at a disadvantageCitations ≠ endorsements of quality!

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE H-INDEX (and other metrics)?

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

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