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Evaluating Authors, Articles, and Journals

Information about assessing researchers, publications, and journals and increasing the impact of your scholarship.

Author Metrics

 

Author or Scholar Level Impact

 

Metrics Overview

  • h-index (Hirsch Index)
    • Source: Scopus author search, Google Scholar, Publons
    • This is the number of papers (h) that have received at least h citations. An h of 15 means that an author has at least 15 publications that have been cited at least 15 times each. Please note that your h-index may vary depending on the source (coverage of journal titles, time span, etc.)  For instance, h-indices derived from Google Scholar tend to be higher than those from Scopus. Learn more about the h-index here.
  • Author Impact Factor
    • Source: locate your citation counts from a variety of sources, use a variety for best results - Scopus, Google Scholar, SciFinder, Publish or Perish, etc.
    • Modeled after the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). For an AIF of 15 in 2020: the total citations received 2018 and 2019 / number of articles published in 2018 and 2019 = 15.
  • i10-index
    • Source: Google Scholar
    • Created by Google Scholar, this is the number of publications the researcher has written that have at least 10 citations.
  • g-index
    • Source: Publish or Perish (software)
    • The g-index is a variant of the h-index that places greater weight on highly cited articles. The g-index is always the same as or higher than the h-index. Proposed by Leo Egghe in his paper "Theory and Practice of the G-Index" in 2006.
    • A g-index of 20 means that an author has published at least 20 articles that combined received at least 400 citations total.
  • Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)
    • Source: iCite (NIH)
      • The RCR represents a citation-based measure  of one or more articles, and can thus be used to explore either article or author level impact. It is normalized to account for the average citations for other NIH publications in the same field.