Discovery Support
Researcher profiles and identifiers help make your research available to the widest possible audience and improve the discoverability of your material. By increasing your online profile and engagement, you may be able to influence your success rate in the competitive research and academic environment. How to demonstrate research impact and engagement varies widely by discipline context and specific purpose (i.e. grant application or promotion application).
By adopting one or more of these suggestions you will:
- Build your online presence: Make it easy for researchers, students, journalists and funding bodies to find you and your publications.
- Increase your research impact: Increase the chances others will read and cite your publications.
- Track and measure the impact of your research: Make it easy to keep track of your citation metrics and research impact.
- Get the credit for your research: Ensure you get credit for all your research and publications.
Citation Metrics
Measures of Author Impact: h-index, g-index, i10-index, m-index
An author's impact on their field has traditionally been measured using citation counts, i.e. the number of academic publications he or she has authored and the number of times these publications are cited by other researchers. Thus, a simple way to demonstrate your impact is to create a comprehensive list of your publications and the number of times they have been cited.
Different indices have been created that calculate an author impact 'score' using data on their publications
h-index (the most widely used)
The h-index identifies the highest number of an author's papers to have the same or higher number of citations. For instance, for an author to have an h-index of 7, he or she must have at least 7 publications with 7 or more citations.
Most researchers obtain their h-index from Web of Science, Scopus, or Google Scholar.
Limitations of the h-index:
- A researcher's h-index is likely to vary, depending on the database used to calculate it because the sources may have indexed a different number of the author's work.
- Early-career researchers have an h-index disadvantage.
- Cannot use h-index to compare researchers across different fields or researchers in different stages of their careers.
g-index
Proposed in 2006 as an alternative to the h-index, the g-index attempts to give more weight to highly-cited papers. The g-index remains controversial and is not yet widely accepted.
i10-index
Used only in Google Scholar, this simple index, introduced in 2011, counts the number of publications with at least 10 citations.
m-index
The m-index takes into account years since first publication and is more relevant to an earlier career researcher than the h-index.
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Scopus This link opens in a new window
Citation database of high-quality peer-reviewed literature in scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings with added functionality to identify research trends, and view metrics at the journal, document and author level.
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Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
This version provides links to TXST resources. Searches scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports.
Alternative Metrics
Altmetrics, or alternative metrics, are new measures that take into account online reader behavior, network interactions with content, and social media. Altmetrics are meant to complement, not replace, traditional impact measures and are measures of online attention and engagement.
Altmetrics measure impact at the article/item level. Examples of Altmetrics include:
- mentions on Facebook, Twitter, or online news sites
- exports to citation management systems like Mendeley or Zotero
- downloads (of full text articles, software, etc.)
- comments in blogs or other online forums
Altmetrics are measures of attention, not quality!
