What are research metrics?
Research metrics are quantitative indicators used to describe aspects of scholarly communication, visibility, use or citation.
- Citation counts.
- h-index.
- Publication counts.
- Journal-level indicators.
- Article-level attention indicators.
Understanding the h-index
The h-index is intended to combine productivity and citation impact. A researcher has an h-index of h when h publications have each received at least h citations.
A researcher with an h-index of 8 has at least 8 publications that have each received at least 8 citations.
Responsible interpretation
- Compare researchers within appropriate disciplinary contexts.
- Consider career stage.
- Consider publication type.
- Recognise differences in citation cultures.
- Use qualitative assessment alongside metrics.
Institutional research visibility
Accurate researcher identifiers, institutional repositories and consistent author affiliations can improve the discoverability of Veritas University research outputs.
Advantages
Provides evidence about scholarly visibility.
Supports research reporting.
Helps researchers monitor dissemination.
Can identify highly visible publications.
Supports strategic research planning.
Consequences of neglect
- Misinterpreted metrics can create misleading conclusions.
- Overemphasis on metrics can encourage unhealthy publication behaviour.
- Cross-disciplinary comparisons can be inappropriate.
- Incorrect researcher profiles can distort institutional reporting.
How the Library can help
- Citation analysis guidance.
- Researcher-profile checking.
- Metric interpretation.
- Research visibility consultations.