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How to Use Metrics in Promotion and Grants - a self-help guide: You as an author

Author Ranking

You can use the h-index, citations and field-wighted citation impact to show your strength as a researcher. For information on how to find the h-index and number of citations see the Research Metrics, Impact and Engagement Library Guide

Benchmarking - compare yourself against others

Example Statement:

"My field-weighted citation impact  for x article published in 2021 is 1.79, which put this citation 79 % over the world average in the field of Biology" (source: SciVal 16 November 2022).

Field Weighted Citations Impact (FWCI) is a metric that is available through SciVal. 

FWCI  compares the total citations received by a researcher's publication to the average number of citations received by similar publications from the same research field. You can limit the FWCI to a specific date range or subject area.  SciVal FWCI data is sourced from Scopus. 

The average FWCI is 1.0. If your FWCI is higher than 1 your FWCI is higher than the average, while if it is less it means that you are cited less than the average.

Warning: Be careful when using this metric for individual reseachers.

FWCI can be affected by outlier publications. It is better to use FWCI for individual articles. Another possibility is to say that your publications are in the top precentiles. In SciVal it is possible to find authors in 1, 10 or 25 percentile. 

For more information see: 

Author Ranking

Example Statement:

"My field-weighted citation impact in the period 2016 - 2121 is 2.21, which places me in the top 40 researchers in Australia for Zoology Field of Research" (source: SciVal, 16 November 2021).

In SciVal you can find an author's rank if the researcher is in the top 500. SciVal are able to sort on h-index, citations or field-weighted citation impact. 

You can select to search on:

  • subject area
  • authors nationality or globally
  • specific date range

How to find the ranking of the top 500 Researchers in SciVal

  1. Go to SciVal
  2. Select the Overview Module
  3. Select the Countries menu on the left menu
  4. Select the geographical area you would like to view - e.g., Australia
  5. Change the date range and the subject area in the Overview module
  6. Select 'Authors' to view the top 500 authors, and select a metric to rank authors.
  7. Find your name from the list of authors

h-index

Example Statements

Scopus has indexed 6 of the papers I have published. In Scopus I have an h-index of 4 (Scopus 17/11/21). I also have an additional paper indexed in Google Scholar, which is not included in Scopus. This article has 5 citations and my Google Scholar h-index is 5 (Google Scholar 17/11/21).

My PHD was supervisor Professor xxx with an h-index = 23 (source: Scopus, 6th December 2021), who is a world expert in ...

h-index = the number of publications with a citation number greater than or equal to h.

The h-index looks at your productivity e.g, number of publications published, with how often they are cited.
If you have 7 publications, but only 5 of them are cited 5 times or more, you will have a h-index of 5

For more information see:

How can I use a h-graph?

Google Scholar - Where to find your H-index

The easiest way to find your H-Index according to Google Scholar is to create an author profile and include all of your publications. Then:

  • Find your profile in Google Scholar.
  • Your H-Index will appear in the author details to the right of your profile.

Citations tracked by Google Scholar are not controlled for quality. Metrics from Google Scholar may appear higher and may include errors. It can provide better indexing of journal articles and citations in disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences however.

Scopus - Where to find your h-index

  • Do an Author Search in Scopus 
  • Your author profile will display your number of publications, citations and h-index. 
  • Occasionally an author have more than one profile. You can ask Scopus to merge the profiles. This might increase your metrics.
  • You can learn more about Scopus Author Profiles here.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar will give you h-index and i10-index all years, as well as for the last 5 years.

H5-Index

Example Statement

"In the period 2016-2021 my h5-index is 4. This shows that of the 5 publications I published in this period I at least 4 articles have a 4 or more citations" (source: SciVal, 6th December 2021).

h5-index - SciVal

h5-index uses a 5-year publication and citation window on the standard h-index calculation and as such can be used to fairly track the metric over time in the Benchmarking module. The h5-index for an entity in 2016 takes the publications published by that entity from 2016 - 2020 and the citations received by those publications in the same time window to form a data set. It then uses the h-index calculation on the data set to compute the h5-index.

For more information:

h5-index - Google Scholar

Google Scholar also has an h5-index option. The number is almost always higher than the h5-index in SciVal. 

For more information:

Example ROPE Statement

Zehnder, G., Gurr, G. M., Kühne, S., Wade, M. R., Wratten, S. D., & Wyss, E. (2007). Arthropod pest management in organic crops doi:10.1146/annurev.ento.52.110405.091337

This 2007 article has been cited 398 times  and has a field-weighted citation impact of 8.94 which indicates that this article has received almost 8 times the average citation rate globally compared with similar publications in the same field of research. It was published in the top 1% ranked journal by SJR for the year of publication.

Data from spreadsheet downloaded from SciVal.

This 2007 article has been cited 398 times ...

Author performance metrics in SciVal

Find metrics related to your publications in SciVal. The metrics in SciVal are based on your Scopus author profile.

  1. Login to SciVal.  You might need to register if you don't already have an Elsevier account.
  2. Click on Overview to define a new researcher.
  3. Define a new Researcher
    • Click the 'Add' link at the bottom of the Researchers and Groups section
    • Search by name to find an existing researcher or group, or 'Define a new Researcher'
    • Follow the workflow to identify and add the researcher to SciVal

Instructional Videos:

How to download a spreadsheet with all your publication metrics

In SciVal it is possible to download a spreadsheet with all the publications indexed by Scopus and the associated metrics.

  • Go to SciVal
  • Access the Benchmarking Module
  • Select a researcher or define a new researcher
    • If you are not defined a researcher:
      •  Select Researchers and Groups on the side panel
      •  Select Add Researchers and Groups
      •  Select Define a New Researcher.  Search for the name and Save and finish
  • Select the following
    • Y-axis = Scholarly Output
    • X-axis = Publication Year
  • Adjust the date range so it includes all of your publications indexed by Scopus
  • Select Table 
  • Select Overall Output - View these publications
  • You should now get a pop-up with all the publications
  • Select Export - in the top right hand corner
  • Select the details you want to export.

A video instruction of this is available in: SciVal - Benchmarking for grants applications

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