Research Metrics, Are you measuring your research work impact with the research community?
Research metrics are important in measuring the impact of the research work that you communicate with the research community. A range of research metrics is used to assess the performance of the publication and also the author level.
The three typical research metrics in measuring the impact of the research work are:
1. h-index
2. g-index
3. i10-index
- h-index
The h-index expresses the number of articles (h) that have received at least h citations. It is influenced by both quality and publication impact. It is represented by a single number that remains the same or goes up with time, but it cannot go down. This metric is useful to benchmark activity in a way that relies on the balance between two fundamental aspects of performance which are productivity and citation impact. An example of an h-index can be when the author has 10 research papers in a database that have been cited at least 10 times then the h-index is 12. Similarly, if the writer has one paper that has been cited 10 times then the h-index is 1. The higher the h-index number is better (USC, 2020).
2. g-index
The g-index metric is proposed by Leo Egghe in his paper. It is an improved version of the h-index which gives more weight to highly cited articles. The advantages of the g-index are that it accounts for the performance of the authors to articles and helps to make more apparent the difference between the author’s respective impacts. The disadvantage of the g-index is that it is not a widely accepted metric as much as the h-index and there is an ongoing debate about the best metric among h-index and g-index (USU, 2020).
3. i10-index
The i10-index is a metric used by Google scholar which is the number of publications with at least 10 citations for all the citations listed in the researcher’s profile (USU, 2020). This is very simple, free, straightforward, and easy to calculate metric, but it is only available in Google Scholar.
What metric/s are you using to measure the impact of your research work with the research community?
References
USU, 2020. Measuring Your Research Impact: Author Impact. [Online]
Available at: https://usuhs.libguides.com/c.php?g=184957&p=2506307#:~:text=The%20g%2Dindex%20gives%20more,)%20at%20least%20g%C2%B2%20citations.%22
[Accessed 29 November 2020].
