Assessing Your Research Impact
Capturing your Research Profile
The H index score is a commonly used indicator of research output which reflects both the number of publications and the distribution of citations to those publications. A h index can be created for a single author or a research unit. The index is only useful in comparing scientists working within the same field as citation conventions differ substantially between disciplines.
An author with an index of h has published h papers each of which has been cited by papers at least h times.
A h index can be determined manually but automatic calculators are also available in Scopus and Web of Science. Your h index is likely to differ depending on the citation tool you use as indexing coverage varies between tools and therefore your publication and citation profile in each is likely to be different.
The following practices can make capturing your research profile easier in the long run:
- When publishing always use the same name variant. Problems can arise
- Where authors alternate between the English and Irish versions of their name
- Where authors alternate between using middle initials and/or shortened versions of their firstnames
- Where female authors marry and switch to publishing under their married name
- Where your papers are difficult to select from other similar author names in citation databases Group your variant author names in Scopus and create a ResearcherID identifier for Web of Science.
- When publishing always use the same institutional name variant. Always use the designate university name National University of Ireland Galway when submitting your manuscript for publication
Citation Analysis
Citation analysis involves counting how many times a paper or researcher is cited by other scholars in the field. This performance measure assumes that influential scientists and important works are cited more often than others.
The ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citations Reports database enables you to extract a citations analysis from your searches (see below). These are published by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI).
Points to remember when undertaking a citation analysis
- Limited number of articles: The ISI’s citation databases indexes a limited number of peer-reviewed journal titles excluding citations from many books and conference proceedings, therefore your citation analysis for a particular field or author may not be comprehensive
- Same name authors: also known as “homographs” – it may be difficult to separate citations to two unrelated scientists who happen to share the same last name and first initial.
- Cronyism: friends or colleagues may reciprocally cite each other to mutually build their citation counts
