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Understanding Journal Impact Factor

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While research metrics may seem well established in the scholarly landscape, it can be challenging to understand how they should be used and how they are calculated. The Metrics Toolkit is an online evidence-based resource for researchers, librarians, evaluators, and administrators in their work to demonstrate or assess the impact of research.(Champieux, 2018)

Research Metrics Reference

Measuring Impact

This segment provides information on how tools and approaches used by research institutes and universities to measure journal impact, author impact and tracking research impact.

 

Measuring Journal Impact

Measuring Author Impact

H-Index

H-Index is used by researchers to quantify research output by measuring author productivity and impact. This measure was developed by J.E. Hirsch and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102 (46): 16569-16572 November 15 2005. It reflects the productivity of authors based on their publication and citation records (Clarivate Analytics, 2019). The h-index is based on a list of publications ranked in descending order by the Times Cited. The value of h is equal to the number of papers (N) in the list that have N or more citations. This metric is useful because it discounts the disproportionate weight of highly cited papers or papers that have not yet been cited.

How do you calculate H-Index?

Your h-index is based on a list of your publications ranked in descending order by the Times Cited count. The value of h is equal to the number of papers (N) in the list that have N or more citations.

The researcher would have an h-index of 8, as 8 articles have been cited at least 8 or more times, and the remaining articles have each been cited 8 times or less.