Citation Research and Impact Metrics

Methods and metrics for evaluating scholarly and research impact.

What You Need to Know

The h-index measures an individual's citation count over time. When looking at the total article output for an individual, the h-index is the number of articles that have been cited at least that number of times. So if an individual has an h-index of 9, that means they have 9 articles that have been cited 9 or more times. The higher the number, the better.

Originally, proponents of the h-index claimed it was a better way to compare individuals' output when those individuals were at different career points. However, the h-index also appears to favor those with longer careers and therefore, more publications, just as the total citation count does. Take into consideration the number of publications and career length when comparing individuals' h-indexes.

Experts.ASU
Data contained in Experts.ASU is pulled from Elsevier's SCOPUS database. Only data for ASU faculty is included; for articles not in Experts.ASU, use the SCOPUS database to obtain a citation count.

Because the data comes from the same source, you may compare h-indexes from Experts.ASU with h-indexes from Scopus (provided the authors are in the same field and at the same career level).

Finding H-index in Experts.ASU

In the center of the screen click on "Profiles" and put the ASU faculty member's name in the search box.
On the results page, you should see only the entry for that person. Click on the person's name in the entry's box.
On the person's profile screen, the citation count is listed on the right side.

Scopus
Scopus is an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and web sources with tools to track, analyze, and visualize research. Scopus provides access to a broad portfolio of peer-reviewed content from around the world.

Scopus covers some conference proceedings and books/book chapters in addition to journal articles and all document types are covered in the h-index calculation. Originally Scopus only contained article data from 1996 to the present, however they are now updating pre-1996 cited references going back to 1970 so authors with articles published from 1970-1995 may see their h-index increase over time.

Finding H-index in Scopus

Using an author search, find all the publications in the database for an individual. Recommended search strategy:

"lastname firstinitial" as author
"AND arizona state university" as affiliation name
Click on the author's name to view their profile
The h-index is prominently displayed on the left side of the page.