Library Guides: Research Impact: Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics are indicators/metrics based on citation counts which are used to analyse the scholarly impact of publications and researchers.

Use of Bibliometrics

Metrics, such as h-index, may help identify the impact of a researcher or a research output
Metrics may indicate research trends
Rankings and metrics may be used to inform decisions about journals to which you might submit your work for publication
Metrics may also help researchers decide which publication to be included in PBRF
Identify authors you might want to cite or collaborate with

Bibliometrics should always be interpreted cautiously. They are intended as a relative measure within a discipline, not as a numeric value to be taken in isolation. There are limitations when using metrics for impact evaluations.

Metrics toolkit

The Metrics Toolkit may give you some ideas about the metrics available for researchers. Noted that this toolkit doesn't cover these metrics: CiteScore (Scopus), SJR, SNIP, Snowball metrics, Eigenfactor, etc.

Key citation analysis tools

	Scopus	Dimensions	Google Scholar (GS)
Coverage	Over 23, 452 peer reviewed journals (including 5,500 open access journals) Over 850s book series 9.8 million conference papers Most scientific fields: Health sciences, physical science and life science More than 44 million patent records	126M research publications - journal articles, conference papers, preprints and books/book chapters Datasets, grants, clinical trials, patents and policy documents connected with publications	Unable to determine the sources GS covers Global scholarly resources across all subject areas Includes free online scholarly publications Includes grey literature
Timeframe	From 1966	Unknown	Unknown
Metrics	h-index CiteScore SJR SNIP Field Weighted Citation Impact	Field citation ratio Relative citation ratio Altmetric attention score	h-index h5-index h5-median
Author ID	Scopus Author ID Can link to ORCID	The Author ID number can be located from the URL of the author's profile	None
Alerts	Article alerts Document citation alerts Author citation alerts	Search alerts for publications and grants	Search alerts Article alerts Follow authors & citations
Strengths	Indexes high quality journals Useful author profiles Includes book indexing Patents Citation analytical tools could be used for analysing impacts and identifying journals for publishing Author citation/publication analysis Journal ranking list Altmetric scores Includes author keywords	An integrated research database for searching and analysing publications, grants, patents, clinical trials and public documents With author profiles Multiple classification schemes including FOR and UN sustainable development goals Could use for identifying journals for publishing Able to analyse authors' publications, journals, institutions, collaborations and funders Identify institutional strengths Network visualisations Altmetric scores Can search MeSH in PubMed publications	Easy to use May find citations of your work in books or online academic literature not found in Scopus and other databases. May find more NZ publications by using GS Author profile showcases individual author's publications and author h-index
Limitations	Limited NZ / Australasia publications Limited book citation indexing No subject headings	Unable to limit results to peer reviewed articles May not include all NZ publications Limited NZ policy documents Some citation links may show less than Scopus Without subject headings or keywords Some articles with missing metadata especially affiliation data	Does not have the same sort of quality control as most library-subscribed databases Unable to limit results to peer reviewed articles No citation analytical tools No subject headings or keywords
Export to: EndNote Mendeley Zotero	Yes	Yes	Yes

Librarian assistance

For help with research impact, please contact your Liaison Librarian, or the Team Leader, Research Support. We can assist with:

Finding journal rankings and impact factors
Finding citations of your outputs and your h-index
Creating alerts to keep up-to-date
Identifying bibliographic details for your output
Locating journal publisher details
Using researcher IDs and social networking tools to promote your research