Publication Metrics

Author-level metrics attempt to quantify impact by analyzing citations arising from an individual author's publications.

The h-index (Hirsch index) measures the impact of a particular scientist rather than a journal. It takes into account the number of papers published and the number of citations received by these papers resulting in a single number rating. For example, a scholar with an h-index of 5 has published 5 papers, each of which has been cited by others at least 5 times.

Note that an individual's h-index may vary between databases. This is because different databases index different journals and cover different years. For instance, Web of Science calculates an h-index using the years 1985-present. Google Scholar Citations covers a different set of years and journals.

Advantages:

• These metrics can give a more holistic idea of author impact by including a wide range of journals.
•  Combines assessment of both quantity (no. of papers) and quality (no. of citations)

Disadvantages:

• Bias toward more prolific and more established authors. Early-career researchers will have a lower H-index.
• A work's first citation could take years.
• Not generalizable across disciplines.
• First and corresponding authorship is not considered.
• Article types are not considered. 

Use Web of Science's Author Search to find all the publications by a particular author and create a Citation Report showing the author's most highly cited articles, citation trends, average citations per article and other metrics, including the h-index.

Google Scholar Citations* has the following features:

• Authors can track their own publications (tracking of other authors' works is only possible if they have a profile). 
• The types of metrics utilized are a simple citation count, h-index, and i10-index (the number of publications with at least 10 citations).
• Set up automatic updates to the citation metrics.
• Manually update your profile.
• View information on citations for other authors by doing a search for them in Google Scholar and the scholarly metrics information will be listed under the citation information.

*A free Google account is required.

Einstein Research Profiles is a database that includes metrics for Einstein and affiliated researchers. Metrics include:

• A fingerprint that represents the collective expertise and experience of the researcher.
• Research concepts that have been most significantly present over this researcher's career
• Institutional network of the researcher
• Coauthor network of the researcher