Citations, Altmetrics and Researcher Profiles: Researcher metrics
Researcher - specific metrics
Citation of a researcher's publications is commonly considered evidence of research quality and engagement. Citation metrics which may be useful when describing your overall research performance are your:
- h-index
- Total number of citations
- Average citation count per article
- CNCI (Category Normalised Citation Impact) for your set of Web of Science - indexed publications (see the Web of Science tab)
- Percentile In Subject Area average for your set of Web of Science - indexed publications (See the Web of Science tab)
h-index
The h-index attempts to measure the productivity and citation impact of an author. Proposed by J. E. Hirsch in 2005, "A scientist has an index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np-h) papers have no more than h citations each."
For example, a researcher with an h-index of 15 has, of their total number of publications, 15 papers which have been cited at least 15 times each. To gain an h-index of 16, they need 16 papers that have received at least 16 citations and so on.
h-index limitations and considerations
Although it is still widely used, you should be aware that the h-index:
- is not permitted to be included in National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant applications.
- should not be compared across disciplines due to different citing practices.
- does not take into account a researcher's career stage
- is not sensitive to highly-cited papers
The table demonstrates how two researchers can have the same h-index of 4, despite very different patterns of citation of their work.
| Researcher A | Researcher B | |||
| Papers rank by citation | Citations | Papers rank by citation | Citations | |
| 1 | 10 | 1 | 1348 | |
| 2 | 8 | 2 | 159 | |
| 3 | 6 | 3 | 50 | |
| 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | |
| 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | |
| 6 | 0 | 6 | 3 |
- Both researchers have an h-index of 4. It cannot be 5 because they do not have 5 papers with at least 5 citations.
- Neither researcher can have an h-index of more than 6, as they each have 6 papers in total.
Read more about the advantages and disadvantages of the h- index:
Canadian Institute for Knowledge Development. (2020). H-index, Good or Bad? Canadian Institute for Knowledge Development. Retrieved 27 June 2022 from https://ieconferences.cikd.ca/h-index-good-or-bad/
Ding, Jingda, Chao Liu and Goodluck Asobenie Kandonga, ‘Exploring the Limitations of the h-Index and h-Type Indexes in Measuring the Research Performance of Authors’ (2020) 122(3) Scientometrics 1303
Locating your h-index and total citation numbers
Your h-index can be located using Web of Science or Scopus, and from your Google Scholar profile if you have one. When quoting your h-index, always include the source of the h-index figure. We recommend that in grant, tenure and promotion applications you use one source consistently rather than "cherry pick" the best figure for each publication.
To ensure that each database can provide citation information that is accurate and comprehensive, set up and manage your profiles in these databases. See the Researcher profiles tab for instructions.
Click on the Scopus, Web of Science and Dimensions tabs in this table to learn about other author - specific metrics which are available in these databases
To locate analysis of your outputs in Scopus:
1. Log into Scopus via OneSearch.
2. Perform an author search for your name and select from the results list.
3. The Metrics overview provides your Scopus h-index, total number of citations in Scopus and a citation trend graph.
4. Select the Citation overview link to view a table showing the citation data for all of your Scopus-indexed publications.
5. Select the Analyze author output link for additional analysis.
SciVal is a powerful research analytics tool allowing you to demonstrate and analyse your research performance using citation metrics from Scopus. SciVal enables you to visualize research performance, benchmark relative to peers, find potential partners, and analyze research trends. It is useful for grant and position applications.
Before you do anything else in SciVal it is essential to find your profile. This should only take a few moments.
SciVal has a lot of features and can generate highly customisable reports which you can explore. It is possible to generate use quick reports or use some of the existing report templates for UWA Researchers.
- Log in to SciVal through OneSearch
- Sign in with your Elsevier credentials (you may have created an Elsevier account through Scopus) or register if you have not
- Go to Explore
- Select Define Entity and Researcher (can be found in the top left corner
- From Define a new researcher search for yourself by name. It is a good idea to include your affiliation, especially if you have a common name and could be confused with other researchers with the same or a similar name
- Select your profile from the list. If you think that there may be some publications incorrectly allocated to your profile or any publications may be missing, go to Validate Publications but if you are satisfied with the profile as it is select Directly go to Save Researcher. You should be able to make most changes required to your profile from here but if you need to merge two or more entire profiles in Scopus you can do so using the Scopus Author Feedback Wizard.
- If this is your profile, you have the option to connect this profile to your SciVal account. Save and Finish
- Your profile will now appear in the overview screen and you will be able to start looking at your researcher metrics
Summary
Provides a summary of your output as a researcher however it is only for specific year ranges. If you want to create reports for beyond the year ranges provided use the Report Templates or explore customising reports further.
From the Explore module select your profile from the Entity list in the top left corner. If you do not see your name here you need to find your researcher profile in SciVal.
There are a number of more in-depth reports grouped together by theme accessible from the left-hand-side menu
Bibliometrics - Includes publication and citation metrics as well authorship metrics ( articles where first placed author or corresponding author).
Contribution - Affiliated institutions and journals published in.
Research Fields - Analysis by topics and subject areas
Collaboration - Analysis by individual collaborators, collaborating institution and geographic region
Impact - Policy and Patent citation data
If you would like to see the same data but for different year ranges there are a number of report templates available.
Report Templates
Go to Reporting (top right corner)
Select Report Templates and then Templates provided by your institution. You might find some the templates provided by SciVal useful but those provided by your institution are customised for UWA researchers for specific applications such as grant applications.
Select the report template that best suits your requirements.
From here you will need to select your researcher profile - you can also choose to select multiple other researchers if you will to benchmark against others, however you can just select your own profile. If you are not able to find you own profile in the list make sure you have activated it. Drag your profile across to the right hand side of the screen and select next step.
You can then rename and create the report.
You can then view and edit the report. Each report will have multiple analyses each of which you can go into and edit by going to Explore /edit analysis.
You can also change the year range for the report from here.
You will have the option to save the report. Once you have done this you will have the option of directly accessing the saved report in future rather than having to return to the report template.
See customising reports for more detail on how you might edit your report from the template.
Explore
The Explore module is the easiest way to find metrics for yourself or your research outputs. It can also be used to analyse the performance of an institution or research group, a region or country or to analyse the trends and metrics in a research area.
For more information on using the Overview module see the SciVal Support Center.
Reporting
Save any analysis to a report to create a customised reusable report.
For more information on Reporting in SciVal see the SciVal Support Center.
Benchmarking
The benchmarking module is useful tool not just for benchmarking yourself against your peers in your field but is also useful to create reports for yourself without the year range limitations in the Explore module.
You can select the year range you wish to analyse going back to 1996. You can also choose to to only report on publications from a particular subject area
To create a report for yourself go to Compare and select All Metrics
Select Table and Benchmark multiple metrics then Select multiple metrics at once
From the Add and manage metrics menu you can selection a number of different metrics to report on. Drag across any metrics you would like to include from the left to the right side of the screen. There are a number of different metrics you can select form but some you might consider adding could include.
- Citation Count
- Citation per Publication
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- Outputs in top Citation Percentiles
- Publications in Journal Quartiles
Beyond this you can also look at patent count, scholarly output cited by policy, geographical collaboration or views.
You should now be able to see the metrics you have added in the table. Click on the down arrow next to any metric to see further options for how to display the metric e.g. as a percentage or a total number or for Outputs in the top percentile what percentile.
If you do wish benchmark different researchers you can add any number of other researchers to the table by selecting them from the Researchers and Groups panel.
Web of Science provides a suite of metrics on a researcher's author record. To locate your author record :
1. Log in to Web of Science from OneSearch.
2. Perform an author search by your name.
3. Link to the Citation Report for your work, and an Author Impact Beamplot that provides a normalized citation percentile for all of your papers compared to others of the same age, category and document type.
Use Incites (benchmarking and analytics) for more advanced citation analysis and benchmarking metrics based on Web of Science data, such as:
- Category Normalised Citation Impact (CNCI) metric for all of a researcher's Web of Science - indexed publications or a subset.
This metric is an average of the CNCI received by all of the researcher's Web of Science publications or a subset. See the Research output metrics tab for more information about the CNCI and:
- Average of the percentiles (in subject area) for all of a researcher's Web of Science - indexed publications.
See the Field-weighted metrics tab on the Research output metrics page for information about this metric
Dimensions provides citation metrics and analysis by author.
Note that the free version of Dimensions does not provide access to all of the options in the full version but does allow you to see total citations and analyse by field of research, co-authors and journal.
There are other indicators of research quality and esteem that may provide additional evidence of your research capacity. These may include:
- Conference paper presentation
- International engagement
- Influence on industry/government/public policy/community/cultural organisations
- Successfully acquitted research grants/ projects
- Awards and prizes
- Holdings in libraries
- Partnerships
- Editorships
- Research Fellowships
- Membership of learned academy
- Membership of statutory committee
- Patents
- Registered Designs
- Plant Breeders Rights
- NHMRC and ARC endorsed Guidelines
- Research Commercialisation Income
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