There is nothing more satisfying than knowing that your work has impacted others and that your publication is being used as a source by other scholars. Author and article level metrics showcase the impact of scholarly works. Google Scholar Profile, NIH iCite, and Web of Science are just three examples of places you can find metrics. These metrics can be used in combination with one another to highlight an author's impact and influence, for use in promotion or tenure packets, grant applications, and award applications. As each of these metrics are based on their own data sets, your metrics may vary for each source.
How to Find Your Metrics
- Google Scholar
Sing in or sign up for a Google account. Got to https://scholar.google.com then click on "My Profile" and follow the three steps to set up your profile. Google finds articles that match your information for you; select the ones that are yours to be included in your profile. If you make your profile public you will be able to manually find your ranking among UCF scholars who have also made their profiles public. Google Scholar is updated daily—meaning your metrics are date specific—so include the date accessed when using these metrics. In addition, you can search your articles in Google Books, to see if they have been cited in a book, including textbooks.
- NIH iCite
Visit https://icite.od.nih.gov/analysis and search for your name. iCite only pulls from the PubMed database, so only articles that are discoverable in PubMed will show in the results. Look through the list of articles and select the ones you have authored. As you select, or unselect, articles, you will see the metrics at the top of the page change. You can also load a list of articles into iCite for analyzing. This is beneficial if you want to analyze a group of articles by multiple authors.
- Web of Science
In the Web of Science database, select author from the drop-down menu and search your name. If all of the articles returned belong to you, click on "Create Citation Report" link to see your metrics. If all of the articles do not belong to you, select your articles from the list, then click on "Marked List" (Image 1) in the top-right corner of the page. Then click on "Create Citation Report" (Image 2) to see your metrics.
Image 1: Marked List
Image 2: Create Citation Report
If you have a common name, you may need to add additional information to narrow the results list. You can narrow your results by using an author identifier or selecting "Organization-Enhanced" from the drop-down menu & entering "University of Central Florida".
Metrics By Platform
The type of metrics provided will vary by platform. Below is a table of the different types of metrics available on each platform.
| Web of Science | Google Scholar | NIH iCite | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citation Counts The total number of times an article has been cited in other articles within the same data set. An article's citation count may vary between platforms. |
Yes for Web of Science | Yes for Google Scholar | Yes for NIH iCite |
| Article Group Metrics Selected articles that are grouped together for analysis. |
Yes for Web of Science | Yes for Google Scholar | Yes for NIH iCite |
| Hot Paper A term to denote an article is in the top .1% of papers in a specific field. |
Yes for Web of Science | No for Google Scholar | No for NIH iCite |
| H-index An author-level metric that uses citation counts to measure impact. The formula is the h number of articles that have been cited h number of times. |
Yes for Web of Science | Yes for Google Scholar | No for NIH iCite |
| i10-index The number of articles that have been cited 10 or more times. |
No for Web of Science | Yes for Google Scholar | No for NIH iCite |
| Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) Citation-based measurement for articles in PubMed. |
No for Web of Science | No for Google Scholar | Yes for NIH iCite |
| Weighted RCR Measures influence by comparing weighted RCR to total publications. |
No for Web of Science | No for Google Scholar | Yes for NIH iCite |
| Article Percentile Percentile rank among NIH-funded articles. |
No for Web of Science | No for Google Scholar | Yes for NIH iCite |
| Author Ranking Ranking of UCF scholars whose profiles are public. |
No for Web of Science | Yes for Google Scholar | No for NIH iCite |
Example of Narrative
According to Google Scholar on March 27, 2018, John Smith, Jane Brown and Jack Hunter had a combined h-index of 4 with an i10 index of 5 for their work in the field of autoimmune disorders. Their articles have been cited 91 times and are considered highly influential by the National Institutes of Health. Their article on myasthenia gravis was cited 36 times and is consider to be a “hot paper” in the top .1% of articles in the academic field of clinical medicine in the Web of Science database and was ranked in the top 1% by the National Institutes of Health. In addition, their article is referenced in the textbook, Autoimmune Disorders edited by Sam Parker.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our “Getting Published” guide and that you’ve found the information helpful. Don’t forget to enlist the help of one of our medical librarians if you find yourself stumbling along the way—we are here to help!
Best of luck!