There are several databases which allow you to track and measure the scholarly impact of the publications of an individual researcher. Most used are Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar.
Measuring impact starts with identifying the publications of the researcher in the database(s) you have chosen as a source. Name ambiguity is a recurring issue: one researcher can have multiple names and one name can refer to multiple researchers. To solve this problem of misidentification several researcher IDs have been developed. ORCID is a researcher ID that's requested by more and more funders and publishers. The online module ‘YOU in databases: academic profiling’ gives examples about why it’s important to manage your academic profile.
You can read more about these most used databases and the measuring of impact in the course Research Impacts: sources and metrics.
ORCID - Open Researcher and Contributor ID - is an initiative to solve the author/contributor name ambiguity problem in scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current author ID schemes. An increasing number of funders and publishers will ask for your ORCID.
You can create your own ORCID ID, which is a 16-digit number (xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx). You can link your ORCID ID to your Scopus Author Identifier and to your ResearcherID.
For more information on how to create your own ORCID, see the handout made by the University Library.
As an example: this is the ORCID of Peter Hupe (ESSB): http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9982-4362
Web of Science offers bibliographical access to scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Over 12.000 journals are covered. Conference proceedings are also part of the EUR-subscription.
Researcher identifiers in Web of Science
Publons allows you to claim your publications in Web of Science. A ResearcherID will be assigned to the Publons profile after you add Web of Science publications to your profile. When you have a ResearcherID you can link this ID to your ORCID. The ResearcherID and ORCID are visible on the article level in Web of Science.
General information about Publons and ResearcherID is available here. You can also download the handout made by the EUR University Library.
As an example: this is the Publons Profile (with ResearcherID) of Maureen Rutten-van Mölken (ESHPM): https://publons.com/researcher/2520437/maureen-pmh-rutten-van-molken/
In Publons you can also add reviews performed for journals and conferences and journal editor activities.
Available researcher impact metrics
- Number of publications
- Number of times cited
- H-index
Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database - covering over 21.000 journals from more than 5.000 publishers, and also books and conference proceedings. More information about Scopus: Scopus Quick Reference Guide.
Researcher identifiers in Scopus
The Scopus Author Identifier distinguishes between names by assigning each author in Scopus a unique number and grouping together all of the documents written by that author. An algorithm is used that matches author names based on their affiliation, address, subject area, source title, dates of publication citations, and co-authors. If mistakes have been made in this automatic process, you can request author detail corrections (for example merging profiles or excluding publications from your profile). The Scopus Author Identifier can be linked to your ORCID (see Elsevier's tutorial).
More information about Scopus Author Identifier: the help file of Elsevier. You can also download the handout created by the EUR University Library.
As an example: this is the Scopus Author Identifier of Arnold Bakker (ESSB): http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=55936456200
Available researcher impact metrics
- Number of publications (this can include books and book chapters)
- Number of citations
- H-index (with and without self-citations)
With Google Scholar you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts, patents and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. The coverage is not limited to certain disciplines or certain journals.
Researcher identifier in Google Scholar
You can create your own Google Scholar Citations profile. You have to match your publications to your profile. When you make this profile public, it will appear in the Google Scholar results when people search for your name. In Publish or Perish version 5 it's possible to search by Google Scholar Profile.
More information about Google Scholar Citations is available here. You can also use the handout created by the EUR University Library.
As an example: this is the Google Scholar Citations profile of Henk Volberda (RSM): https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=r_JK4awAAAAJ&hl=en
Available researcher impact metrics
On a Google Scholar Citations profile you can find:
- Number of citations (based on all years or on the last five years)
- H-index (based on all years or on the last five years)
- I10-index (the number of publications with at least 10 citations)
Publish or Perish (from Anne-Wil Harzing)
Publish or Perish is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and presents several metrics, including:
- Number of papers
- Number of citations
- Number of citations per paper
- H-index
- G-index
You can read more in The Publish or Perish Book or The Publish or Perish Tutorial.
