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Author Metrics and Impact: Overview

The Focus on Author Metrics

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

Author metrics (sometimes referred to bibliometrics or publication 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 Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science, and you can click here to access links and all of the relevant disclaimers associated with each database. A handy explanation of 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.

The last section includes Additional Resources including a methods of correcting your H-Index score in Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science, and a short overview on the other types of author metrics.

First Step: 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.