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Use author metrics to measure an author's research impact relative to other authors working in similar fields.
Common citation metrics that can be applied to an author include:
Note Citation rates vary between disciplines and can be affected by:
The h-index is a measure of the number of publications published (productivity), as well as how often they are cited.
h-index = the number of publications with a citation number greater than or equal to h. For example, 15 publications cited 15 times or more, is a h-index of 15.
Caveat for the h-index
Database coverage and related citations and may differ between databases. Always provide the data source and access date along with the h-index.
Productivity refers to the number and type of publications you have contributed to.
Collaboration refers to the authors with whom you have worked within your institution, nationally and internationally.
Author status refers to the position of the author on a publication byline, e.g., sole author, first author, or last author.
Author ranking is a method of sorting authors nationally or globally by either h-index, citations, or field-weighted citation impact. This method can be limited to a specific date range or subject area.
"My field-weighted citation impact for the last 5 years is 9.53, which places me first in Australia for the Psychology Field of Research." (Source: SciVal, 12 Aug 2022).
A Scopus search places Prof X as the most prolific author in Australia for the topic of Supply Chain Management within the Business context and 4th internationally.
Comparing your publication set to others
To benchmark the impact of your publication set against others, use normalised or field-weighted measures to ensure that you are comparing like-with-like.
Field Weighted Citation Impact is an indicator of impact normalised for subject field, age, and document type, that represents the ratio of citations received relative to the expected world average for a subject field, publication type and publication year.
The global mean of the FWCI is 1.0, so an FWCI of 1.50 means 50% more cited than the world average. An FWCI of .75 means 25% less cited than the world average.
"My field-weighted citation impact for the last 3 years is 11.44, which indicates that my papers have been cited more than 1000% above the world average." (Source: SciVal, 12 Aug 2022).
Category Normalised Citation Impact (CNCI) is an indicator of impact normalised for field/discipline, age, and document type. The CNCI in InCites is similar to the Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) in SciVal but uses data from Web of Science rather than Scopus.
It shows how your paper or group of papers performs relative to baselines and so puts citations in context. A CNCI value of one represents performance at par with world average, values above one are considered above average, and values below one are considered below average. CNCI value of two is considered twice the world average.
| Metric | Use | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Citation counts (individual publications or a publication set) | Gauging the influence of your publications in academia. Use in research funding applications, CVs, promotion applications, collaborations. | |
| Productivity (number and type of publications) | Demonstrating volume of work over time. | |
| Collaboration | Illustrating collaborative or interdisciplinary scholarship. Includes Co-authorship, collaboration by institution, country, sector or individual. | |
| Authorship | Use in research funding applications, CVs, promotion applications. | |
| Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) |
Benchmarking the impact of your publication set against other authors/institutions/countries. Research funding applications, researcher CVs, promotion, collaborations, research impact. |
SciVal (Scopus data) |
| Category Normalised Citation Impact (CNCI) |
Benchmarking the impact of your publication set against other authors/institutions/countries. Research funding applications, researcher CVs, promotion, collaborations, research impact. |
InCites (Web of Science data) |
Learn how to find author metrics