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Author-level metrics

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Author-level metrics Norsk flagg

Author metrics are quantitative indicators used to assess the citation impact of an individual researcher’s publications. They should never be used in isolation or to directly compare researchers, due to differences across disciplines, career stages, and publication practices.

Important considerations

Author citation metrics are highly dependent on discipline and career stage, as publication practices and citation patterns vary widely across fields and over time, making direct comparisons difficult. These metrics can also fluctuate from year to year and may differ depending on the data source used (such as Web of Science, Scopus, or Google Scholar). In addition, recently published papers, even if influential, are unlikely to have accumulated many citations and may be undervalued in metric-based assessments. For these reasons, author citation metrics should always be used alongside qualitative evaluation, such as peer review work and consideration of broader contributions to research, teaching, policy, and society.

1. H-index

The H-index provides an indication of both productivity and citation impact. An H-index of h means the author has h publications that have each been cited at least h times. For example, an H-index of 10 means that 10 publications have each received at least 10 citations.

Advantages Limitations
  • provides an indication of sustained citation impact across a researcher’s publications
  • favours researchers with longer careers

  • does not account for differences in citation practices between disciplines

  • can be affected by self-citations and differences in database coverage

Read more about H-index

2. i10-index

The i10-index, developed by Google Scholar, counts the number of a researcher's publications that have each received at least 10 citations. It can be found on researchers' Google Scholar profiles.

Advantages Limitations
  • simple and easy to understand

  • indicates the number of publications that have reached a defined citation threshold
  • does not distinguish between moderately and highly cited publications

  • strongly dependent on the citation database used

  • mainly associated with Google Scholar and therefore less suitable for comparisons across different data sources

3. G-index

The G-index is similar to the H-index but gives more credit to highly cited publications. A G-index of g means that the top g publications have received at least g² citations in total. For example, a G-index of 5 indicates that the top 5 publications of an author have been cited at least 25 times (52). 

Advantages Limitations
  • gives greater weight to highly cited publications than the h-index

  • can highlight researchers with a small number of particularly influential publications
  • can be disproportionately influenced by a small number of highly cited publications

  • less widely used and recognised than the h-index

Read more about G-index

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Questions?

For questions about publication data, assistance with your own bibliometric analysis, or advice on managing researcher profiles and improving the visibility of your research, email us at forskning@ub.uit.no.

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