Scholarly Communications

• Author-level metrics look at the citations to an author's work identified in datasets from citation-tracking tools such as Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar.
• These metrics are proxies for the influence and prestige of the author's research. 
• Author-level metrics are often used in hiring, tenure, promotion, and evaluation, and can also be used in grant applications.  
• Like other impact metrics, author metrics can be hard to comparing between disciplines, don't differentiate between quantity and quality of citations, and can provide incentive for self-citation to inflate the metrics. 

Types of Author Metrics

These are common author metrics you'll see.

Citation Counts

• These are basic calculations of citations to an author's published work. 
• Citation counts will vary based on the underlying citation dataset used for the count. 
• Different services will provide different counts and might include cumulative totals, totals over a period of time, total per year, or average citations per article. 
• Available in Scopus and Google Scholar.

h-Index

• The h-index is measured as the highest number of articles (h) published by an author that have been cited at least (h) times. 
  • So an h-index of 5 means that an author has 5 articles that have been cited at least 5 times. 
  • A higher number is more valuable as it shows more articles with more citations. 
• The original h-index was designed to measure an author's whole career, but there are versions that limit to a specific time period. 
• An author's h-index may vary based on the tool used to calculate citations since they are working with different citation datasets. 
• What would be considered a good h-index will vary by different disciplinary citation expectations. 
• Available in Scopus and Google Scholar.

i10-Index

• The i10-index measures the total number of publications an author has with at least 10 citations. 
• The i10-index can be cumulative or measured over a limited period of time. 
• What would be considered a good i10-index will vary by different disciplinary citation expectations. 
• Available in Google Scholar.

Viewing and Updating Your Author Profile

• Start by identifying your author page in Scopus. Since Scopus identifies authors algorithmically, you may find more than one page was created. Use the video below to learn how to find your page and request that multiple versions be merged.

• Scopus will automatically add your published articles to your profile.  
  • To improve the accuracy of your profile, make sure to connect your ORCID iD. 
  • If you identify corrections that need to be made, click the Edit Profile link on the page.
    

Author Metrics

• To see your citations counts and h-index, select Analyze Author Output on your profile page.
• The video below will take you through how to access and adjust all of your author metrics. 

Citation Overview

• You can also select to see a citation overview for your profile, documenting citation totals and linking to every citation to your work. 
• You can adjust what citations are included in the overview. 
  • You can select which date range to look at. 
  • You can filter your citations to exclude self citations, self citations from all authors including co-authors, and citations from books. 
• Scopus will also provide an h-index for the selected citations with a link to the h-graph. 
• If you want to do your own calculations, you can export the citations as a csv file to the upper right of the graph. 

Viewing and Editing Your Author Profile

• Start by setting up a Google Scholar profile. 
• After your profile is created, go to your profile using the My Profile link from the Google Scholar homepage.
  
• Google Scholar will automatically identify articles you published and citations to them. You can also manually add articles to your profile. 

Author Metrics

• On the upper right of your profile, you will see your citation metrics. These include:
  • Total citations
  • h-index
  • i10-index
• All metrics will include counts for all time and the last five years.
• Below that is a graph of citations by year going back 8 years. Click the graph to bring up a graph covering all years.  
   
• Click the View All link to see all of the citations included in the metrics.