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Bibliometrics: Measuring Impact: Researcher Impact

Introduction

Research is a very complex process. Performance is influenced by many factors such as a researcher’s age, affiliation, funding, position or research domain. Therefore it is extremely difficult to “measure” the impact of an individual researcher or a research group on the discipline or society.

However, bibliometrics can supplement evaluation and can provide useful information on the impact of a publication. The number of citations can be an indicator on how well received and discussed published research is.

Keep Track of Your Research

You can do seveal things to find out when and by whom your publication is cited:

  • Set up citation alerts for your publications in Web of Science and Scopus
     
  • Create a profile in Google Scholar Citations and get citation alerts
     
  • Sign up on social networking sites, list your publications there and track how often they have been viewed and who is following you
     
  • Use alternative metrics (Altmetrics) to track the impact of your research. Downloads, tweets, likes or mentions are indicators on how often you publication has been discussed. Create an account with ImpactStory

Difference between Scopus and WoS?

For detailed comparison between Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) indices please check this wiki and it's references out.

 

How to Improve Your Impact?

The number of publications in any field increases enormously every year. It becomes more and more difficult for a researcher to keep track of recent publications even in relatively well defined disciplines. That means that it becomes more important to make a publication more visible so it won’t be overlooked.

A few easy to do and easily applied steps can raise the visibility of your publication:

  • Always use the same name version consistently throughout your career, e.g. “Mohamed Al Hajri" not "Mohammed Al Hajri" or "Muhamed Ahmed Al Hajri" , "M. A. Al Hajri", M. AlHajri" etc.
     
  • Use ORCID ID and ResearcherID (see Researcher Profiles Libguide)
     
  • Use a standardised institutional affiliation and address
     
  • Publish in journals with high impact factor
     
  • Collaborate with reputable researchers in other institutions
     
  • Deposit your publication (final draft or published paper - depending on copyright policy of publisher) in the HIKMA PI Institutional Repository.
  • Take advantage of SEO (search engine optimization) by carefully selecting title and keywords for your publication
  • Present preliminary research findings at meetings and conferences
     
  • Join academic social networking sites, e.g. Academia.edu, ResearchGate, LinkedIn
     
  • Utilise social bookmarking with Mendeley, Zotero and similar
     
  • Start a blog devoted to your research projects
     
  • Consider communicating information about your research via Twitter

What is H-Index?

The h-index (a.k.a. Hirsch index) is a combined measure of both productivity and impact.

An index of h means that your h most highly-cited articles have at least h citations each, e.g. a researcher's h-index will be 5 if 5 of his/her articles have been cited at least 5 times.

How to Find Out Your H-index?

The h-index can be calculated by using the following tools:

  • Web of Science (KU Library database subscription)
     
  • Scopus (KU Library database subscription)
     
  • Google Scholar 

Calculate Your H-Index

To manually calculate your h-index, organize articles in descending order, based on the number of times they have been cited.
 

Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar can also be used to calculate an h-index for that particular citation-tracking database.