Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is a broad topic. Here you can find general information on bibliometric measures and the h-index.

What is bibliometrics?

Bibliometrics means using numbers to analyse scientific literature. Common variables are the number of publications, authors, sources, and citations. In practice, bibliometrics can be used to study how publishing activity has developed in a country, a research field, or a research group.

Most bibliometric analyses focus on citations, that is, how much impact publications have had. The basic idea is that articles that are cited often are also of high quality. But citations can also occur for other reasons, for example:

• Criticism of the research
• References to older publications
• Self-citations
• When an article is split into several parts to generate more citations

Bibliometric measures

There are different bibliometric measures. Some basic indicators are:

• Number of publications
• Number of citations
• Number of citations per publication
• Number of publications and citations per researcher
• Number of self-citations
• Number of articles that have not been cited
• H-index

Basic indicators cannot be used to compare different research fields. To make the analyses fair, normalization is needed. This means that the units being compared must be similar, for example within the same research field or publication type. Self-citations also need to be excluded.

Tools

As a researcher, you can use databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, or Google Scholar to find publications and compare citations or other bibliometric measures.

H-index

The h-index is a measure used to describe a researcher’s publications and their impact over time. The value can vary depending on several factors, such as the research field and the database used. To compare the h-index of two researchers, the time frame must also be the same.

If you have access to the following databases through your institution, and have publications indexed in them, you can find your h-index in the following way:

Web of Science

Go to Advanced Search, select Researchers and search by ORCID, ResearcherID, or author name. If there are several authors with the same name, select the correct person from the list. You will then be taken to a page with citation statistics, including the h-index. Select View citation report for more information.

Scopus

Select Authors and search by ORCID or the author’s name. If there are several authors with the same name, choose the correct person from the list. Select Citation Overview to find citation statistics and the h-index.

Google Scholar

First, create an account. Then select My profile to find your h-index. Note that the publications listed in Google Scholar may vary over time.