Bibliometric or citation metrics are a way of quantifying scholarly impact by measuring the number of author, article, or journal citations. These metrics are often used for consideration in annual and tenure reviews. Scholarly impact can be measured in a number of ways, and it is important to consider the context of these measurements. For example, highly specialized fields may have a lower impact simply because the field is so narrow. Similarly, citation metrics often lack context which can vary wildly from metric to metric. However, citation impact can provide insight into how your work is being used and disseminated.
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Journal citation metrics measure the impact of a journal over time within their specified discipline. Journals are measured in a variety of ways such as Journal Citation reports, impact factor, h-index, or journal ranking. These metrics help determine how influential or prestigious a particular journal is within a given field or discipline. The higher the rankings and impact, the more competitive it is to be published in that journal. Journals may also be ranked according to yearly or cumulative citations, h – index, and other factors.
Authors can measure their impact by looking at the number of citations to each of their articles or they can look at their more cumulative h-index. The h-index is based on the total number of articles an author has written and how many times each of those articles has been cited. For example, an authors with 5 articles, that has been cited 5 times each, will have an h-index of 5. An author’s h-index may vary database to database, depending on how many articles are available through that resource. Authors should look at their h-indexes through several databases, focusing on resources with the most articles by that author.
Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar offer ways to look up individual authors and their citation metrics. Google Scholar and Scopus author profiles are free to use, while a subscription to Web of Science is provided by the library. Web of Science and Scopus look in their respective databases to find authors and gather citation information. Having a unique identifier such as an ORCID can make it much easier to link research back to the true author, especially if the author has a common or easily misspelled name.
Google Scholar profiles allow researchers to track their citation impact through the Google. However with Google Scholar, there is no way to know if the citation counts are coming from scholarly articles, dissertations, conference proceedings, pre-prints, or other grey literature. Thus, the citation impact numbers calculated by Google Scholar are often higher than through other tools. Google Scholar also constantly generates a list of articles as possibly being written by the author, and must be consistently maintained. Regardless, Google Scholar can be an effective tool for better understanding the broader impact.
Journal citation metrics measure the impact of a journal over time within their specified discipline. Journals are measured in a variety of ways such as Journal Citation reports, impact factor, h-index, or journal ranking. These metrics help determine how influential or prestigious a particular journal is within a given field or discipline. The higher the rankings and impact, the more competitive it is to be published in that journal. Journals may also be ranked according to yearly or cumulative citations, h – index, and other factors.