Bibliometrics is the statistical analysis of research publications. It measures the impact of:
- an author (author-level metrics)
- a journal article, book, book chapter or other document (document-level metrics)
- a journal (journal-level metrics).
There are several commonly used measures.
- Citation counts – this measures the number of citations of an author’s publications, a single document like a journal article, book or chapter, or a whole journal.
- Publication output – this measures the number of publications produced by an author, research unit, institution or journal. It may be a list of publications, or just a total number.
- H-index – this measure combines a researcher’s productivity and citation counts. An h-index of h means h articles published that have each been cited at least h times. A higher h-index implies greater impact. The h-index should only be compared within the same discipline.
When gathering bibliometrics, use a range of tools, as database coverage varies.
For example, Google Scholar metrics tend to be higher than those in Scopus. Funding agencies and evaluation systems may place a lesser value on Google Scholar metrics because Google Scholar includes non-peer reviewed material and is not always recognised as a formal mediated article database.
Author-level metrics
Make sure your name and profiles are set up correctly, so that your author metrics are more accurate.
Learn about how to manage your research profiles
Google Scholar
You must have a Google Scholar profile to gather author metrics.
To find your author metrics, connect to Google Scholar. Then either:
- click on My Citations at the top of the page (you may be asked to log in at this point), or
- search for your researcher name, then click on the linked name at the top of results page to view your profile.
Once at your author profile, you will see your citation count, publication output, and h-index.
Learn about setting up your researcher profiles
Scopus
To find your author metrics, connect to Scopus. Then either:
- search for one of your articles, look for your name in the record, and click on your name, or
- click on the Author Search tab, fill out the name fields (and optionally, affiliation), and search.
You will see:
- your document and citation counts
- your h-index
- lists of your publications, citations and co-authors.
SciVal
SciVal is a research assessment/bibliometrics tool that can be used to analyse research performance.
Connect to SciVal to view your
- publication impact within your research area (FWCI)
- research performance or the research performance of a group
- research performance compared to other researchers in your research field (locally, nationally, globally).
Document-level metrics
Journal articles
To find the metrics of journal articles you’ve published:
- Search for your journal article title in Google Scholar or Scopus.
- If you don’t find your article in Scopus, do a Scopus reference search. See the information in the next section.
- In each database searched, look for the total number of citations for the article (either called ‘Cited by’ or ‘Times Cited’).
- If you wish to add a qualitative dimension, you can click on the citation count number to see the list of publications that have cited your article. You can then analyse who has cited your article, in which journals and over what time span. You can also examine some of the citing articles to see what was said about your work.
Books, book chapters and conference proceedings
Finding citation counts
You might find citations for books, book chapters, conference proceedings (and other non-article documents) by searching for the title in Google Scholar and Scopus, as you would for journal articles. If you find your title, click on the Cited By link.
However, many of these documents are not indexed in Scopus. They may appear in the reference lists of articles and documents indexed in Scopus and Google Books.
Searching these reference lists for mentions of your document will give you a citation count.
How to do a reference search in Scopus
- Connect to Scopus.
- Type in the title of the item, with double speech marks around it for a more precise search.
- Change the adjacent dropdown box to References, and click on Search.
- You will see a list of items in which your document appears in the reference lists. You may want to double-check that it is your document in the reference lists, and not one of the same title by a different author.
How to do a reference search in Google Books
- Connect to Google Books.
- Type in the title of the item, with double speech marks around it for a more precise search.
- The relevance-ranked results should include books in which your document appears as a reference – particularly those at the top of the results. Look for your document title in the snippets displaying in the results. You may want to double-check that it is your document in the search results, and not one of the same title by a different author.
Finding book reviews
Book reviews are useful for quantitative metrics, particularly if a book has been reviewed a lot. However, book reviews are even more important as a qualitative measure. Reviews are valuable evidence of what someone who has read the book thought about it.
Search for book reviews in:
- Discover – search for the book title, then tick the Reviews check box under Source Types in the left hand menu
You can also try other sources of book reviews, such as Amazon. Scopus does not include book reviews.
Journal-level metrics
Journal-level metrics include many different measures and rankings, based around:
- citation data
- productivity
- h-index
- various weightings such as prestige and subject field.
Commonly used metrics based on Scopus citation data are:
- CiteScore
- SJR
- SNIP.
Other commonly used metrics are:
- Impact Factor
- Google Scholar metrics.
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