Guidance for Researchers: Bibliometrics

These publication impact measures have been referred to as Bibliometrics defined as "the application of mathematical and statistical analysis to bibliography; the statistical analysis of books, articles, or other publications" (OED).

Bibliometrics aim to measure the influence or impact of research using statistical methods and can be useful for:

• assessing research performance;
• measuring impact of researchers and outputs;
• tracking research activity; and
• evaluating journal or article quality.

Image is attributed to Eigenfactor.org and the University of Washington

The links below are a useful starting point to find out more about how metrics can be used by researchers and their place in the Research Exercise Framework (REF). 

Article Level Metrics

A citation counts refer to the number of times an article has been cited.

A citation count is a measure of impact rather than quality. An article may be cited in order to refute its conclusions, or as an example of poor practice.

Citation Counts can be useful for: 

• Identify the articles which have had the greatest influence on the direction of research in your field.
• Find out who is citing your own article, and why. 
• Create an alert to new citations for a known article, in order to keep abreast of latest developments.

Databases which include citation counts include Web of Science and Scopus.  You can also use Google Scholar to find citation counts.  Google Scholar includes  'grey literature' such as policy papers and technical reports in addition to journals.  However, the criteria for inclusion in Google Scholar are not transparent.

Journal Impact Factors

Journal impact factors are a measure of the average number of times articles published in the journal are cited. They are often used as a measurement of the relative importance of a journal within its field. Journal impact factors can be used to inform your decision on which journal to publish in to improve the impact of your research. 

There are a number of journal impact factors available to use including:     

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is a prestige metric based on the idea that ‘all citations are not created equal’. With SJR, the subject field, quality and reputation of the journal has a direct effect on the value of a citation.

Source Normalized Impact Paper (SNIP) - Enables contextual citation impact. The impact of a single citation is given higher value in subject areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa.

Citescore Metrics - calculates the average number of citations received in a calendar year by all items published in that journal in the preceding three years.

All of these metrics use Scopus data and are available on Scopus, available through BCU Library.  To find and compare journal impact factors from the Scopus homepage, select the Sources tab.  From here you can search for an individual journal or find journals by subject or publisher.

Author Level Metric: the H-index

• Comparing researchers of similar career length.
• Comparing researchers in similar field, subject, or Department, and who publish in the same journal categories.
• Obtaining a focused snapshot of a researcher’s performance.

• Comparing researchers from different fields, disciplines, or subjects.
• Assessing fields, departments, and subjects where research output is typically books or conference proceedings as they are not well represented by databases providing h-indices.