What are Author Metrics?
Author metrics allow you to determine the influence and productivity of an author or researcher. An author's impact is determined by many factors, including how often they are cited and in what types of journals they are cited. There are also non-traditional factors, including links to author's works on websites, types of press choosing to publish an author's work, and what repositories contain copies of an author's work.
Author metrics are available in:
- or ask a librarianif you need help determining how to calculate and understand your author metrics.
Determining an Author's Impact
- h-IndexMeasures the productivity and impact of a scholar’s published work, using the author’s most cited articles and the number of citations they have received in other publications.
- Harzing's Publish or PerishThe software program uses Google Scholar to retrieve and analyze academic citations to present statistics on citations, journal metrics, and author metrics.
- AltmetricsSee this section for more information.
More on h-Index
Determining h-index
- Web of Scienceh-indices can be found on the Citation Report page after an author search.
- Scopush-indices can also be found on the Citation overview page after an author search.
- Google Scholar CitationsCalculate your own h-index. Sign up for a free account. Step-by-step instructions are available after you log in. Caution: Google Scholar has been noted to produce inflated numbers because of its inclusion of non-scholarly content.
Articles Discussing Limitations of h-index
- Hirsch Index Rankings Require Scaling and Higher MomentBletsas, A. & Sahalos, J.N. (2009). Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(12), 2577-2586. [HawkID log in required for full text article access.]
- Strange Attractors in the Web of Science DatabaseGarcía-Pérez, M.A. (2011). Journal of Informetrics, 5(1), 214-218.
- Testing the Calculation of a Realistic h-Index in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science for FW LancasterJacsó, P. (2008). Library Trends, 56(4), 784-815.
- Ranking of Library and Information Science Researchers: Comparison of Data Sources for Correlating Citation Data, and Expert JudgmentsJiang, L., Sanderson, M., Willett, P., Norris, M., & Oppenheim, C. (2010). Journal of Informetrics, 4(4), 554-563.
Your Author Profile
Take charge of your author metrics! This will allow you to keep track of your cited references and other metrics like your h-index.
- ORCID"Provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher."
- Google Scholar CitationsIncludes FAQs about claiming and setting up an author profile in Google Scholar.
- Scopus Author ProfilesTutorials on claiming and managing an author profile in Scopus.
Cited Reference Search
To determine how many times an author has been cited in other published works, try either:
- Cited Reference Search help sheetFor instructional help. Developed by UI's Hardin Library.