Library Subject Guides
When writing a CV, funding application or project outcome report research indicators can provide a quantitative scaffold for your narrative. What are you most proud of, what sets you apart?
Examples of research indicators:
The h-index aims to measure the scholarly influence of an author. A scientist has an h-index of h if h of their papers have at least h citations each. For example, an author with 3 publications with 31 citations, 3 citations and 2 citations respectively has an h-index of 2: 2 of their publications have 2 or more citations. As more and more limitations of the h-index are being identified, it is slowly falling out use.
Limitations: Publication and citation rates vary greatly between disciplines. The h-index cannot be used to compare researchers from different fields. Additionally, the scholar's career length is not taken into account, which benefits more experienced over early-career researchers. The h-index is also insensitive to highly-cited papers, rewarding productive researchers over individuals with a more selective research focus.
Many tweaks of the h-index attempt to fix the above issues (g-index, hg-index, q2-index). However, none has been widely adopted.
In an effort to reform research assessments, many organisations are exploring new CV formats.
How do I write a narrative CV?
Whilst all sources of bibliometric data are continually extending their coverage, no single database indexes all the world's scholarly publications. Particularly, coverage of the arts and humanities may be less comprehensive as their publication practices differ significantly from sciences and social sciences.
Generally, Web of Science and Scopus offer good coverage of sciences and social sciences, with less emphasis on humanities. Google Scholar covers all disciplines equally well, and captures 'grey literature' such as policy papers and technical reports in addition to journals. But the criteria for inclusion in Google Scholar are not wholly transparent.
Traditionally, bibliometrics focus on citations to evidence research strengths. However, publication practices vary across disciplines, making citations unreliable for comparisons across research fields. Field-weighted metrics, such as the Field-Weighted Citation Impact or the Source Normalised Impact per Paper on Scopus and SciVal, are better indicators when multiple disciplines are compared.
Although citations are a common impact indicator, they only reflect one dimension academic reach and can't reflect the impact of research outside academia.
Especially for more applied field, citations are not a useful indicator of research impact. Policy or patents mentions, software and data downloads, views in online databases, other altmetrics (news mentions, tweets, blogs) and code forks might be more useful, depending on the aims of your research.
Note: When presenting author-level metrics based on publication data bases, it is important to include how many publications (and hence citations, co-authors etc.) were missing from the list as no database covers all sources.
Note: When presenting author-level metrics based on publication data bases, it is important to include how many publications (and hence citations, co-authors etc.) were missing from the list as no database covers all sources.
If you don't have a profile on Google Scholar yet and are interested in your own metrics, you first have to create a profile: Using your Google (york.ac.uk) account, follow the 'my profile' link in the top left corner. Further instructions for creating a Google Scholar profile are on the promote your research profile page.
Once complete, a summary of your citation metrics in Google Scholar can be found on the right hand side of your profile (see example to the right).
You can also get an overview of people at York with a (public) Google Scholar Citations profile.
To identify citation counts for someone else, search on the author's name (and affiliation) in Google Scholar. If they have set up a public profile, a link in a list of user profiles leads you to their citation metrics.
SciVal is a research performance analysis tool based on the Scopus database. The University of York pays for a subscription, so if you sign up with your york.ac.uk email address you are all set to go.
The easiest way of accessing information on your own SciVal research performance indicators, is through the 'Export to SciVal' link on you Scopus profile (see below). Navigate your way to your own Scopus profile using the Author Search tab. Under your Scopus summary indicators, you will find the link to 'Export to SciVal'.
This will take you to the SciVal overview page, where you can see aggregate measures for your publications, publication views and citations, topic and subject mix, collaborations, the journals you published in and the patent impact of your work.
"Altmetrics" are indicators that go beyond the traditional citation-based metrics. This can include article views, likes, downloads, social media and news mentions, policy citations. As bibliometrics is moving away from citations as their main indicator, several providers of altmetric data emerge and many publishers summarise some altmetric attention metrics on their article pages.
PlumX is Elsevier's altmetric tool, which is incorporated on every Scopus article page (see to the right). An example PlumX summary of article usage, captures, mentions, Social Media attention and citations is shown to the right. 'View PlumX details' lets you further explore your altmetrics.
Altmetric.com calculates an Altmetric Attention Score for every article, which reflects online engagement with your research. A characteristic donut badge (example below, click badge to see more details) helps you easily identify how much and what type of attention a research output has received. You can find altmetric donut badges on publisher article metrics pages, institutional repositories, or even individual researcher or lab publications pages.
The easiest way to access altmetric information on any article is to download the Altmetric bookmarklet. Install it in your browser to get one-click article level indicators when reading an online journal article.
Our tip: Altmetrics accumulate long before any citations roll in, allowing you to evidence the influence of your work a lot earlier. Analysing the types (colours in the PlumX or Altmetrics badge) of engagement can also help you identify the most effective channels of outreach for your work.
