Author metrics look at the citation rates of the outputs of an author or group of authors.
The Library provides access to Scopus and Web of Science which you can use to explore how your outputs have been used. Information about Google Scholar Citations can be found by clicking on the link on the left hand menu. Publish or Perish uses Google Scholar data to produce various article metrics.
We recommend that you set up an ORCiD to increase your online visibility and ensure that your outputs are linked to you. You can find out more about ORCiD on our Getting Published guide
You may hear references to the h-index or indeed be asked for your h-index as it is one of the most prevalent author metrics used. The metric was suggested by physicist Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005 as an attempt to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the published body of work of a researcher but it can be misleading which is why we do not recommend its use.
The h-index is based on the number of citations that a researcher has received consistently across all their published outputs. However, it is discipline size dependent with individuals in small specialized fields of research tending to have a lower h-index, it doesn’t take into account self-citations and the longer that a researcher has been writing and publishing the more likely it is that they will have a higher h-index.
Other metrics include the g-index and the m-index which are modifications on the h-index which try to take into account some of the criticisms of the h-index as above.
