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Research Impact

Web of Science author search

It is possible to create an author citation report on the Web of Science.

To do this, login to Web of Science and click on the down arrow on the Web of Science home screen and select Author. 

Type in the author's surname and initials (or first name).

You will see an author profile with information such as the list of publications and the h-index. 

Scopus author search

To create an Author report in Scopus, click on Author Search and type in the author's surname and first names or initials and click Search.  

From the list of results, click on the author's name. This should produce an Author details page. 

This shows the list of the author's publications which are indexed on Scopus and also a list of the publications which cite them.

It is possible to produce an author citation report and analyse the author's output and see any co-authors.

Author details for Grattan, Kenneth Thomas Victor in Scopus showing 763 documents, 7127 citations in 5057 documents, a h-index of 36 and 150 co-authors.

 

Tracking your research

  • Set up citation alerts for your publications in Web of Science and Scopus.
     
  • Create a profile in Google Scholar Citations and receive citation alerts.
     
  • Sign up to researcher social networking sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu and 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 your publication has been discussed. You can create an account with ImpactStory Some databases such as ScienceDirect and some resource discovery tools such as CityLibrary Search display Altmetrics data where available.  

H Index

The h-index ( the 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 their articles have been cited at least 5 times.

Graph representing the H index, with the number of published papers on the horizontal axis and the number of citations on the vertical axis

The h-index is more informative than the total number of articles or the total number of citations (which can be inordinately influenced by a small number of highly-cited articles and therefore not an accurate reflection of productivity).
The h-index can be calculated by using the following tools:

There are a number of limitations and cautions to be taken into account when using the h-index. These include:

  • Web of Science
     
  • Scopus
     
  • Google Scholar
  • Publish or Perish software
    • Academic disciplines differ in the average number of references per paper and the average number of papers published by each author.
       
    • The length of the academic career will impact the number of papers published and the amount of time papers have had to be cited. The h-index is therefore a less appropriate measure for junior academics.
       
    • There are different patterns of co-authorship in different disciplines.
       
    • Individual highly cited papers may not be accurately reflected in an h-index.
  • Datasheet 'calculating the h-index' from the MYRI website

Improving your impact

As the number of publications increases each year, it can be difficult  for researchers to keep track of recently published materials in their disciplines.

A few factors may increase the visibility of your publication:

  • Always use the same name version consistently throughout your career, e.g. “John J. O’Sullivan”, NOT “J. J. O’Sullivan”, “John O’Sullivan”, “John James O’Sullivan”
     
  • Use a standardised institutional affiliation and address.
     
  • Publish in journals with high impact factor.
     
  • Collaborate with researchers in other institutions.
     
  • Deposit your publication (final draft or published paper - depending on copyright policy of publisher) in an institutional repository such as City Research Online. 
     
  • Take advantage of SEO (search engine optimisation) by carefully selecting title and keywords for your publication.
     
  • Register for an ORCID and/or Researcher ID in order to be more easily found in databases.
     
  • Present preliminary research findings at meetings and conferences.
     
  • Join academic social networking sites, e.g. Academia.edu, ResearchGate, LinkedIn and include your publications on them.
    Utilise social bookmarking tools such as Mendeley, Zotero or CiteULike.
  • Start a blog devoted to your research project. Consider communicating information about your research via Twitter.