Library Guides: Research Impact: Traditional metrics

Traditional ways to measure impact

Author

Traditional measures of author impact include the number of publications in your field and the number of times these publications have been cited by other researchers. Listed below are two common research metrics that use different algorithms to measure scholarly output.

h-index
A common research metric, it aims to measure both productivity and impact of an author's scholarly output. An h-index is calculated by taking the number of papers published and looking at how many times all of them have been cited at least h times.
g-index
A more recent research metric, it was suggested in 2006 as an alternative to the h-index. It is designed to add more weight to highly cited articles.

Common tools for calculating research impact, including the h-index, are Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Instructions for each of these tools can be found here.

Journal

The importance of a journal within a field and its impact are generally measured through the number of articles published per year and the number of citations to articles published in a particular journal. The table below lists some common ways of measuring journal impact.

Common Measures of Journal Impact

	Impact Factor	Eigenfactor	SCImago
Measure of...	Frequency with which the 'average article' in a journal has been cited in a particular year or other defined time period	Measure of importance: overall value provided by all articles published in a a journal in one year	Measure of prestige; accounts for number of citations received by a journal and importance of the journals that citations came from
Can it be used to compare journals from different disciplines?	No	Yes	Yes
Where can I get it?	Journal Citation Reports	Journal Citation Reports OR free from Eigenfactor.org	Scopus OR free from SCImago Journal & Country Rank

(This table is adapted from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library's research impact guide.)