Bibliometrics

What is bibliometrics?

Bibliometrics involves performing quantitative analyses of scientific literature where the key variables can be publications, authors, source material or citations. In practice, this means, for example, examining how publishing activities have developed within a specific country, research area or research group. The majority of the bibliometric analyses are about citation analyses, meaning which Impact Factor the scientific publications have had. The basic assumption is that scientific articles that have been cited many times are also of a high quality, note, however, that research can also be cited in criticism, to draw attention to previous publications, cited by the researcher himself or published in smaller sections to generate more citations. There are different bibliometric measures, some basic bibliometric indicators can be for example:

• 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 not quoted
• H-index

Basic indicators, on the other hand, cannot be used when comparing different subject areas, as the units must have similar conditions in order to be able to compare. These advanced bibliometric indicators always include so-called standardisation. This means that the units being compared must be equivalent for the analysis to be correct, for example within the same subject area or publication type. In addition, self-cited publications must be eliminated in order for the analysis to give a true and fair view. If you as a researcher have access to, for example, Web of Science, Scopus or Google Scholar, you can find publications and compare citations or other bibliographical measurements.

H-index

The H-index is a measurement tool used to describe a researcher's publications and their impact over time. However, there are different parameters that allow the h-index to vary, for example between different subject areas and databases. The time aspect must also be similar in order to be able to compare the h-index between two different researchers. If you as a researcher have access to the databases below via you're institution, and have publications in them, you can calculate your h-index as follows:

• Web of Science
  Search by ORCID, ResearcherID or author. At the top right of the hit list, click on Create citation report, then you will come to a new page that contains citation statistics, including the h-index.
• Scopus
  Select Authors and search by ORCID or the author's name. If there are several authors with the same name, you need to select the correct person in the list. Click View citation overview at the top center of the list. This will lead you to a new page with citation statistics. At the top right of the page you can see the h-index, or select View h-graph for more information.
• Google Scholar
  First you need to create an account, then click on My profile to calculate your h-index. Please note that publications in Google Scholar may vary from time to time.