LibGuides: Author Metrics and Impact: Overview

The Focus on Author Metrics

Metrics are how your contributions to the academic conversation are measured.

Your author metrics are measurements which help to demonstrate your research impact. The formulas that calculate these numbers and the databases that use them vary.

Many academic institutions (including LTU) rely on the H-Index number to determine your impact. Your H-Index is calculated in both Google Scholar and SCOPUS, and a handy guide to the H-Index can be found here.

Scholars often consult tools that measure journal impact when making a list of desired journals to publish in. These tools help the authors to better understand which journals are being the most cited in their fields, and can be found here.

Before your research activity can be quantified, you must make sure you have set up persistent identifiers to link you (the author) to your body of work. The next box is a link to all the tools you will need to set up your persistent identifiers.

Set up your Persistent Identifiers

What is a persistent identifier? It is a continuous reference to a digital resource. Unlike URLs (which may break) a persistent identifier reliably points to a digital entity.

ORCID
ORCID, which stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a free, unique, persistent identifier for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities. (Referenced by both Scopus and Google Scholar.)
Scopus ID
A Scopus ID is automatically generated if you have a paper in the database: if so, registration is not required. If you need to add a Scopus Author ID, you can create an account (be sure to sign up for an ORCID first) by following these easy steps.
Google Scholar Profiles
An easy way for authors to showcase their academic publications. Check who is citing your articles, graph citations over time, compute several citation metrics and make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results.