Research Impact Metrics

What are author-level metrics? Why track at this level?

Author-level metrics measure the impact of the scholarly output of a single researcher. Author-level metrics are designed to help researchers assess the cumulative impact of their work, rather than the impact of a single publication. All author-level metrics are derived from article-level metrics: they aggregate or summarize the impact of an author's publications.

Frequently-Used Metrics

• h-index
• i10-index
• g-index
• e-index

Notes and Limitations

As a "general rule of thumb:

• If an academic shows good citation metrics, it is very likely that he or she has made a significant impact on the field.

"However, the reverse is not necessarily true. If an academic shows weak citation metrics, this may be caused by a lack of impact on the field, but also by one or more of the following:

• Working in a small field (therefore generating fewer citations in total);
• Publishing in a language other than English (LOTE - effectively also restricting the citation field);
• Publishing mainly (in) books."

Source: Anne-Wil Harzing, Publish or Perish