Journal and author impact measures Assessing your impact (h-index and beyond)

Journal and author impact measures
Assessing your impact (h-index and beyond)
ABOUL ELLA HASSANIEN
FOUNDER AND CHAIR OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH GROUP IN EGYPT
FACULTY OF COMPUTERS AND INFORMATION, CAIRO UNIVERSITY
12 December 2015 ‫المنوفية‬ ‫حاسبات‬
‫والمعلومات‬ ‫الحاسبات‬ ‫كلية‬–‫المنوفية‬ ‫جامعة‬

Scientific Research Group in Egypt
www.egyptscience.net
Seminar on Journal and author impact measures: Assessing your impact (h-index and beyond), December 2015 by Professor Aboul ella Hassanien

SCIENCE CAN SAVE LIVES, BUT ONLY IF SOCIETY LETS IT

Agenda
Module 1: Introduction to Bibliometrics
This module provides an overview of
bibliometrics; the context for the use of
publication and citation analysis in higher
education; a look at the main metrics
used; the main tools available to research
staff and students and a look at the
issues and limitation of bibliometrics.
Module 2: Tracking Your Research
Impact
This module focuses in detail on the use
of the main bibliometric tools (and
resources) available to track and assess
research performance at individual,
departmental, institutional and country
level.
Module 3: Journal Ranking and Analysis
This module highlights the main journal
metrics used to evaluate journals. It looks
in detail at the Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
and how it is calculated as well as
highlighting additional journal metrics
and emerging journal ranking tools.
Module 4:7 Habits Of Highly Visible
Ph.D. Students
Journal and author
impact measures
Assessing your impact (h-index and
beyond)
Professor Aboul Ella Hassanien
Founder and Chair of Scientific Research Group in Egypt
Faculty of computers and information, Cairo University
Invitation
‫السبت‬12‫ديسمبر‬2015‫والمعلومات‬ ‫الحاسبات‬ ‫كلية‬–‫المنوفية‬ ‫جامعة‬
‫الثالثاء‬22‫ديسمبر‬2015‫والمعلومات‬ ‫الحاسبات‬ ‫كلية‬–‫سويف‬ ‫بنى‬ ‫جامعة‬
‫السبت‬26‫ديسمبر‬2015‫والمعلومات‬ ‫الحاسبات‬ ‫كلية‬–‫القاهرة‬ ‫جامعة‬
Seminar on

Agenda
At the end of this module you will be able to:
Understand the context and use of bibliometrics in higher education
Describe the main metrics used in the evaluation and assessment of
research, and the tools used to gather bibliometric data
Identify the main issues and limitations associated with bibliometric
analyses
Module 1: Introduction to
Bibliometrics
bibliometrics; the context for the use
of publication and citation analysis in
higher education; a look at the main
metrics used; the main tools available
to research staff and students and a
look at the issues and limitation of
bibliometrics.
“...the application of mathematical and statistical methods
to books and other media of communication .”
Alan Pritchard (1969)
“… the quantitative treatment of the properties of
recorded discourse and behavior pertaining to it.”
Robert Fairthorne (1969)
There are many definitions of the term Bibliometrics, for example:
When we talk about Bibliometrics we refer to the quantitative measures used to assess research output, like
publication and citation data analysis.
Citations are generally considered to be a useful indication of a paper’s impact and value to the wider scientific
research community.

Introduction to Bibliometrics
Bibiometrics defined:
In terms of research performance, quantitative
(bibliometric) measurements are used to
complement qualitative measures such as peer-
review.
Publication and citation data can be
used alongside other forms of measurement and
assessment of research activity for example:
Peer-review
Funding received
Awards granted
Patents
The benefits of using bibliometric data to help assess
research performance are:
It is seen as a fair and objective method (rather than relying
solely on qualitative measures such as peer-review)
It is considered cost effective (data is easily produced)
It is transparent and easy to understand

Stakeholders
there are a number of key stakeholders involved in the the Research Excellence Framework (REF) process who conduct
bibliometric analyses.

Measuring your research impact
Government and funding agencies
Bibliometric data is also used in assessing grant applications. Where
appropriate, grant applicants will be required to provide detailed
information relating to their publishing output. This could include:
evidence of publishing in top journals; an author’s h-index and citations
counts where relevant.
Institutional Management and Administration
Evaluating research output is fundamental to all institutional planning
and strategy development activities. Bibliometric data (where
applicable) can be used to help:
◦ Recruit staff
◦ Benchmark performance (nationally and internationally)
◦ Identify areas of strength and weakness (to inform future priorities)
◦ Demonstrate some form of return on investment to funding bodies, industry
and the general public

Measuring your research impact.
Colleges, Faculties, Schools
Individual colleges, faculties, schools and
departments are also keen to monitor their
overall research output and impact using
bibliometric tools to help:
◦ Benchmark their overall research
performance against the performance of peer
units and disciplines nationally and
internationally
◦ Identify potential collaborators

Measuring your research impact
Individual researchers
Research metrics relating to an individual’s published
work are used by institutions and funding agencies to
help assess someone when:
◦ Recruiting
◦ Promoting
◦ Awarding tenure
◦ Awarding grants
It is therefore important that individual researchers are
both aware of the metrics used and the data sources
from which the metrics are retrieved and understand
the issues and limitations of these.

Measuring your Research Impact
The main metrics
Quantitative measures provide just one part of the
picture. They should only be used where it is
appropriate to do so and with an understanding that it
is extremely difficult to compare across disciplines
without taking in to account a discipline's publication
and citation patterns.
It is also widely acknowledged that the main citation
tools do not offer the ability to produce appropriate
and accurate metrics in Humanities, Computer Science
and Engineering. These areas are less dependent on
journals when compared to other disciplines. The
coverage of areas within the Social Sciences is also
limited in a number of tools.

The main metrics (Cont.)
Some points to consider:
◦ When comparing institutions, you must also
consider the number of researchers in each
institution.
◦ Citation behavior varies across disciplines,
thus for example, an institution with a large
medical school and strong emphasis on
science will inevitably score higher in
citation counts.
◦ Citations take time to accrue ‫تعود‬
◦ Average citation counts can be useful when
making comparisons, but always compare
like with like
H-index: The H-index is covered in detail in module 2. It is a popular metric
in the sciences and is used to assess an individual, group of individuals or
institution. The H-index (a single number) takes into account productivity
(paper counts) and impact (citations). If an individual ahs an h-index of 7,
this means that 7 of their papers have been cited at least 7 times each.
As with other key metrics, the H-index can only be used effectively when
comparing like with like. As you will see in module 2, the calculation will
also depend on the tool used.
Journal impact factor: the JIF is a metric applied to individual journals.
JIF represents the average citation counts of papers published in a journal
over a two year period. JIF is produced using data from the Web of
Science. The JIF is updated every year and published in the Journal
Citation Reports (JCR) database

The main Bibliometric tools
Web of Science (WoS)
Scopus
by Elsevier
Publish or Perish (PoP)
by Google scholars
by Thomson Reuters
Let's take some time to look in detail at
each of the main three tools used for
bibliometric and citation analyses. It is
really important that you know which
publications are covered by these tools, the
breadth and depth of coverage and the
citation analysis features available to you.
This will help inform your decision as to
whether you should use one or more of
these tools for research assessment
purposes.

Web of Science
Web of Science (part of the Web of Knowledge suite of resources)
Strengths:
Advanced citation searching and analysis features
Citation data available from 1900
Broad coverage of high impact journals
Additional citation data is available in WOk by searching all databases
Weaknesses:
Conference papers, book chapters and dissertations all excluded
Limited coverage of non-English language articles
Conference proceedings are available but may not be part of your library's subscription

Scopus
Scopus
Strengths:
Advanced citation searching and analysis features
Better coverage of social science titles
Includes conference proceedings
Weaknesses:
Only one library in Scotland has access, and it is not us!
Books, book chapters and dissertations all excluded
Citation data from papers published from 1996 -

Google Scholar (publish or perish
Strengths:
Free
Covers non-English language publications
Covers all types of publications including books and conference publications
Weaknesses:
No quality control, lots of errors in data
Does not cover all journals
Covers non-scholarly content
Coverage uneven across disciplines
Difficult to deal with name variants

Web of Science
The Web of Science (WOS) is a subscription-based
service produced by Thomson Reuters (formerly ISI).
WOS is the oldest and possibly the most widely known
citation database. Its bibliometric data is used in many
studies both nationally and internationally. For example
its publication and citation data is used by the Times
Higher world ranking of universities. The WOS is part of
a suite of resources available through the Web of
Knowledge platform. WOS is made up of three citation
indexes which can be searched independently or together
◦ Arts and Humanities Citation Index. (1975-date)
Approximately 1,000 journals
◦ Science Citation Index Expanded (1945-date) Approximately
7,000 journals
◦ Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-date) Approximately
2,000 journals

Web of Science (CONT.)
Thomson Retuersprovide a listingof the journalsindexed in all three
databases. You can view their journal selection criteria*.You can also
see how to recommend a journal for inclusionin WOS. It is also useful
to note how they categorize the journals.You can view the "subject
category listings"for each of the databases by selecting the databse
from the a-z listingand selecting subject category. It is worth noting
that the journal titledeterminesthe subject category in which a paper is
placed rather than the subject of the paper itself.
When you search all databases on WOS, you get citationdata from all
three databases previously mentioned plus BiosisCitationIndex and
the Chinese CitationDatabase.This gives a more completepicture of
the citationactivityfor a paper.
*http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/

Scopus
Scopus is a subscription based service
preoduced by Elsevier. It is available
via their SciVerse platform and is seen
as the main rival to Web of Science.
Scopus currently indexes over 18,000
titles across all disciplines. It is
extremely expensive and not widely
available in Scottish Universities. More
detailed information, including a list of
titles indexed is available from the
publisher.
The coverage of the social sciences is
broader than WOS and Scopus also
includes some conference
proceedings. At present citation data
is only available for articles published
from 1996 onwards.

Publish or Perish is a free bibliometric analysis tool which is used in
conjunction with Google Scholar. The application was developed by
Anne-Will Harzing.
You can use Google Scholar to search for papers and it will also
provide information about citations to these papers from all sources
indexed in Google Scholar. This is particularly useful for those areas
served less well by WOS and Scopus. POP adds value to the Google
Scholar content allowing you to conduct a number of analyses
including calculating your h-index. A major issue associated with
using the full potential of POP is the quality of information retrieved
from Google Scholar.

Main citation tools
Summary
Which tools should I used?

The main bibliometric tools
Data integrity
◦ Individual records in WoS, Scopus and Google
Scholar reflect the information retrieved from the
original sources, such as published papers, books
and so on.
◦ Author names and addresses are taken from the
paper and indexed so the paper can be found when
you search by an author’s name or affiliation
(address). If the author’s name or any other
information is incorrect on the paper, the incorrect
information will be recorded in the database. Errors
can also occur at data entry level.
◦ Always make sure you are consistent in using the
same syntax of your name on all your publications.
Select a name syntax that is complex enough to
easily distinguish you from other authors. For
example, if you have a common surname, include
the initials of your second name or simply include
the full second name.
◦ For example, Professor Aboul Ella hassanien’s
papers are listed Scopus Database under a number
of name variants. These can be the result of a
simple data entry error. In one case his first name is
listed as ‘aboul’. The original published paper had
Professor Diamond listed as ‘Aboul Ella hassanien’s ’
Data integrity - Institutional affiliation
As with your name, always make sure you list your
institution correctly on your publications. We have seen
lots of examples of researchers including their department
name and excluding their institution‘s name for example,
‘Department of Chemistry, Dublin, Ireland’. The quality of
the data, or lack thereof, will impact on the precision of
the results retrieved.
What can you do?

◦ Scopus will allow you to provide feedback if you come across any errors. In our
previous example where we did an author search for ‘Professor Aboul Ella
hassanien’ and found an error, this can be fed back to Scopus by clicking on the ‘Give
feedback’ link.
◦ Web of Science have developed a service called ‘Researcher ID’
which provides researchers with a permanent ID and more. A permanent ID
ensures publications are matched correctly to their respective authors
ResearcherID provides a solution to the author ambiguity problem within the
scholarly research community. Each member is assigned a unique identifier to
enable researchers to manage their publication lists, track their times cited counts
and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author misidentification. In
addition, your ResearcherID information integrates with the Web of Science and is
ORCID compliant, allowing you to claim and showcase your publications from a
single one account. Search the registry to find collaborators, review publication
lists and explore how research is used around the world!
Researcher ID
What can you do?
Seminar on Journal and author impact measures: Assessing your impact (h-index and beyond), December 2015

ORCID & Author IDs
What is ORCID? Open Researcher and Contributor ID
Names are not enough to ensure credit for your work
and are inadequate for reliably connecting researchers
with their research outputs. Learn how the ORCID
identifier can ensure that your publications, datasets,
and other research outputs are connected with you
every time
An ORCID iD is a unique and persistent identifier for
researchers -- ORCID provides a persistent digital
identifier that distinguishes you from every other
researcher and, through integration in key research
workflows such as manuscript and grant submission,
supports automated linkages between you and your
professional activities ensuring that your work is
recognized.
Having an ORCID iD will help:
Make your work discoverable by others
Provides a means to distinguish between you and
other authors with identical or similar names.
Links together all of your works even if you have used
different names over the course of your career.
Makes it easy for others (grant funders, other
researchers etc.) to find your research output.
Ensures that your work is clearly attributed to you.
Can help you minimize repetitive data entering - when
submitting manuscripts for publication or applications
for grants - systems using an ORCID ID will use ORCID
to help pre-populate information.

Where are ORCID IDs Use?
◦ By publishers in manuscript submission and data repositories
◦ By some professional societies to manage membership, authorship and conferences
◦ By some funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to facilitate forms submission. For example, ORCID iDs can
be linked to SciENcv to generate the required biosketch.
◦ By some metrics tools, such as impactstory.org. Add ORCID to you Impact Story profile to import your citation information - and
view to see altmetrics displayed for your publications.
◦ By researcher profile tools.
Growth in ORCID identifiers, from Oct. 2012-Mar. 2014
ORCID is getting big fast

• Accurate attribution has long been a challenge in the scholarly
sphere. Whether one is the researcher, funder, publisher or another
contributing to this ecosystem, it is critical that work be properly
identified and tied to the right individual, institution, publisher or
funder. Thomson Reuters has long known this, hence the reason
for its ResearcherID solution. And, hence the reason for the
company being a founding member of the Open Researcher and
Contributor ID (ORCID) initiative.
• ResearcherID and ORCID are complementary attribution
identifiers. They go hand-in-hand and it is essential that scholarly
authors and researchers have both.
 ORCID is a platform-agnostic identifier, whereas the ResearcherID
identifier is specific to Thomson Reuters. With a ResearcherID, users
can:
 Showcase and network more easily across the Web of Science™
 Access citation profile and metrics in the Web of Science
 Provide end-user feedback on publications for claiming purposes,
which will propagate through other Thomson Reuters offerings
•With the latest release of ResearcherID, members can seamlessly exchange data between their ResearcherID and ORCID profiles:
http://wokinfo.com/researcherid/integration/

Distinguish yourself in
Three easy steps

End of Module 1
Module 1: Introduction to
Bibliometrics
bibliometrics; the context for the use
of publication and citation analysis in
higher education; a look at the main
metrics used; the main tools
available to research staff and
students and a look at the issues and
limitation of bibliometrics.

Agenda
Understand the strengths and limitations of a range of citation
analysis tools
Select the best tool(s) to meet your own specific need(s)
Use the tools effectively to conduct basic and advanced citation
based analyses
Impact
This module focuses in detail on the
use of the main bibliometric tools (and
resources) available to track and
assess research performance at
individual, departmental, institutional
and country level.

Citation
searching: An
introduction
Citation databases make it possible to
search cited references; that is, they
search for references that are listed in
the bibliographies of research
publications. Users can follow a
particular cited reference, or cited
author, forward in time to find other
articles that have also cited that
author or work.
 Citation databases such as Web of Science and Scopus allow you to
search for articles that have cited a particular paper or papers.
 Citations are references made to earlier work by an author in their
own paper. You can therefore see how a piece of work has
influenced further work and investigations.
 This essentially enables you to go forward in time by viewing who
cited a particular paper or go back in time by viewing the papers
cited by a particular paper.
Citation searching and analysis lets you:
•See who has influenced particular research
•Identify leading researchers in a particular field
•Identify emerging areas of research
•Identify competitors and potential collaborators
•Assess the impact of an individuals’ or group of individuals’
research output

Cited
references
locating current research based on earlier research, patents, reports,
etc.
finding how many times and where a publication is being cited
identifying who is referencing a particular paper
exploring how a particular research topic is being used to support
other research
analyzing the impact of a publication on other research in the field
tracking the history of a research idea
tracking the research of a colleague, or keeping track of your own
research
may be useful for a number of reasons:

Citation analysis and content analysis
 Citation analysis examines the linkages between citing
articles.
 It is the study of the impact of a publication, an author or an
institution based on the number of times works and/or authors have
been cited by others.
 Citation analysis and content analysis are commonly
used bibliometric methods
 Citation analysis can be used to determine the citation
impact of authors, articles, and journals.
Which tool should I use?
The answer to this question is to never rely on one
tool alone.
The number of citations retrieved for a particular
individual or group of individuals will vary
depending on the tool used.
The content (sources) covered by each tool varies as
does the depth of coverage and discipline coverage.
Throughout this lecture you will see sample
searches and analysis using the three most
commonly used citation tools:
 Web of Science
 Scopus
 Google Scholar (Publish or perish)

Measures of Author impact
total number of publications
total number of citations for all publications
number of citations for a particular item
average number of citations
number of downloads (eg from University and
other repositories)
h-index
g-index

Factors affecting citation rates
Type of article (eg review articles are more
highly cited than editorials)
Language
Refutation
Citation bias or self-citation
Subject area
Publication schedule
Journal reputation

Additional tools
◦ There are other tools (databases) which can be
used for citation searching. Many are discipline
specific tools
◦ Whilst they include citation data (times cited and
cited references) they do not provide advanced
citation analysis features as provided by the WoS
or SCOPUS.
Business: ProQuest Central, Keynote
Chemistry: Web of Science
Communications: ProQuest Central
Computer Science: Compendex
Economics: ProQuest Central
Engineering and Technology: IEEE, Web of Science
Mulitdisciplinary: ProQuest Central, Discover
Law: HeinOnline
Nursing: CINAHL
Professions Allied to Medicine: ProQuest
Central, CINAHL, Medline
Physics: Institute of Physics
Psychology: ProQuest Central

What other metrics are available for my
publications?
Article Level Metrics are provided for all the
open access journals produced by the Public
Library of Science (PLOS). Metrics include:
Citations
Article views
Bookmarks (how many times articles have been
bookmarked)
Blog coverage
Comments and notes received
Public Library of Science (PLOS)
PLoS provide more information about how these metrics
are calculated and the issues associated with them. Articles
are often hosted in more than one place and it is not
currently possible to easily combine data from
different sources and platforms.
http://lagotto.io/plos/
PLOS provides citation data on each article as computed by the
following third-party citation measuring services:
•Scopus
•Web of Science
•PubMed Central
•CrossRef.

What is H-index?
A scholar with an index of h has
published h papers each of which has been
cited in other papers at least h times. Thus,
The h-index reflects both the number of publications
and the number of citations per publication.
The index is designed to improve upon simpler
measures such as the total number of citations or
publications.
The index works properly only for comparing
scientists working in the same field; citation
conventions differ widely among different
fields.
The h-index is a popular metric. It was developed by J.E.
Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California, San
Diego and published in Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102
(46): 16569-16572 November 15 2005.

What is H-index and its advantages?
H-index: What is H-index?
Introduced in 2005 by American physicist, Professor
Jorge Hirsch in his article "An index to quantify an
individual's scientific research output", the h-index
is used to measure the productivity of an individual
scientist, group or institution.
What does the number mean?
A h-index of 31 tells us that the author has written
31 papers which have each received at least 31
citations.
H-index: advantages
Seen as a fairer alternative than simply
counting total papers or times cited.
It is a popular performance indicator
commonly used by scientists. It is popular
because it is an indicator based on the
researcher's own work rather than solely on
the "journal" they have published in.
As a metric it is considered fair as it discounts
the dis-poroportionate weight of highly cited
papers or papers that have yet to be cited.
It is easy to compute!

H-index: Point to
note
As we know, publication and citation pattern vary from
subject to subject. Therefore you must always compare like
with like. i.e., researchers with researchers in same field.
The value of the H-index will depend on the length of time an
individual researcher has been publishing so a young
researcher would not be expected to have a strong H-index.
The H-index value will depend on the tool we used (NOT all
tools (databases) have the same depth of coverage and
include the same range of publications, for example some of
them cover journals and exclude monographs, books chapter,
conference papers and reports

How do I
calculate my H-
index?
The main tools used, and available to you
are:
Web of Science
Google Scholar (Publish or perish)
Which tool should I use?
There are pros and cons associated with
each of the tools above. For example,
your choice will depend on the titles
covered by them. In the case of Web of
Science, the calculation will also be
affected by the nature of your library's
subscription to it - perhaps the
subscription may not cover conference
proceedings.
https://www.mat.unical.it/ianni/wiki/ScholarHIndexCalculator
Calculator

How is it
calculated?
A researcher/journal/institution/topic
has an index of h, if h papers have at
least h citations each
•In Thomson ISI Web of Science
1.Conduct a General Search
2.Automatic: click on “Citation Report”, or,
3.Manual: sort by “Times Cited”
delta-H
Delta-h value measure the minimum number of citations needed for
incrementing the current h-index by 1. In delta-h the value is computed as
(h+1)-c[h+1] + sum_(from 1 to h)[max((h+1) - c[i],0)], where c[h] is the
number of citations for the paper in position h, and h is the current h-index

What is journal h-index?
Journal h-index is one measure of the quality
of a journal and can be calculated using data
from Web of Science, Scopus or Google
Scholar.
As with the impact factor, journal h-index does
not take into account differing citation
practices of fields (unlike the weighted SJR and
SNIP) and so is best used to compare journals
within a field.

Impact factors
The term impact factor is used frequently to
denote the stature of an academic journal
within a particular discipline. This information
can be used as one of the measures when
assessing the importance of an individual's
published contribution to their research area.
The impact factor is calculated for a journal,
based upon the number of citations received
by the papers it published over a two year
period, divided by the total number of papers
published during those years. The calculation
is made in the year after publication as that is
when the number of citations a paper receives
tends to reach a peak.
An example of how this calculation is
achieved:
In 2006 there were 51,842 citations to articles
published in Nature during 2004 and 2005.
The total number of articles published
in Nature during 2004 and 2005 was 1943.
51842 / 1943 = a 2006 impact factor for
Nature of 26.681.

Advantages and disadvantages of using
impact factors
ADVANTAGES INCLUDE:
Accepting that they must be used carefully
and that citation patterns are specific to
particular areas of research, impact factors can
be a useful tool when trying to find an
objective measure of quality.
Impact factors are calculated from the number
of citations received by the papers published
in a named journal during the previous two
years. In this way, they can reflect the
changing status of a journal within a research
field, as the number of citations increases or
declines.
DISADVANTAGES INCLUDE:
Impact factors should not be used as a
standard of comparison between disciplines.
Citation practice depends very much on the
subject area, with the result that a high impact
factor for one discipline may look extremely
low in comparison with another.
Look at the following examples from
the Journal Citation Reports, for impact factors
for 2006 (NEXT SLIDE) - next slide

Advantages and disadvantages of using
impact factors: Example
BIOLOGY: THE TOP 5 JOURNALS IN THE
SUBJECT GROUP, ARRANGED BY IMPACT
FACTOR
PLoS Biology 14.101
FASEB Journal 6.721
Bioessays 5.965
Quarterly Review of Biology 5.944
Biological Reviews 5.565
MEDICINE: THE TOP 5 JOURNALS IN THE
SUBJECT GROUP, ARRANGED BY IMPACT
FACTOR
New England Journal of Medicine 51.296
Lancet 25.800
JAMA - Journal of the American Medical
Association 23.175
Annals of Internal Medicine 14.780
PLoS Medicine 13.750
Critics point out that impact factors are calculated as an average for the total published output
of a journal and that this information should not be used to gauge the importance of an
individual research paper. A small number of papers published in a journal may have received a
large proportion of the citations.

Five things to know about impact factors
Not all journals have impact factors. They
must be indexed in Web of Science to have an
impact factor
A journal has only one impact factor, but it
may be listed in more than one category
A journal impact factor should not be looked
at in isolation, but in comparison to other
journals in the same category
Impact factors vary across disciplines
A five-year impact factor may also be used in
some disciplines.
Impact factors can be used to:
identify journals in which to publish
identify journals relevant to your research
confirm the status of journals in which you
have published
As we know, publication and citation pattern vary from subject
to subject. Therefore you must always compare like with like.
i.e., researchers with researchers in same field.

End of Module 2
Impact
This module focuses in detail on the
use of the main bibliometric tools
(and resources) available to track and
assess research performance at
individual, departmental,
institutional and country level.

Agenda
Journal Ranking and Analysis
Module 3: Journal Ranking and
Analysis
This module highlights the main
journal metrics used to evaluate
journals. It looks in detail at the
Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and how it
is calculated as well as highlighting
additional journal metrics and
emerging journal ranking tools.
•Use the Journal Citations Reports (JCR) to identify the top
journal in your field or the impact factor for a particular journal
•Understand how a journal’s impact factor is calculated and
identify other journal metrics available using the JCR
•Demonstrate an awareness of, and an ability to use new and
emerging journal ranking tools
•Identify the limitations and issues associated with the JIF

Measures of Journal Impact
Journal impact measurements reflect the importance of a particular journal in a field and take
into account the number of articles published per year and the number of citations to articles
published in that journal.
Like author impact measurements, journal impact measures can be only so informative, and
researchers in a discipline will have the best sense of the top journals in their field.

About Journal
Citation Reports
The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) was first produced in 1975 by
the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), now Thomson Reuters.
It was first produced using data from the Science Citation Index.
Today JCR is available in two parts: one for the Sciences based on data
from the Science Citation Index and the second, based on data from the
Social Science Citation Index.
Today JCR is widely used to identify the top journals in a field.
These are rated based on citation behavior. The journals are ranked in
JCR using the well known and accepted journal measure - the
Journal Impact Factor (JIF).
JIF is often used by individual researchers to identify the best titles in
which to publish and gain recognition and potential impact. It is important
to note that the JIF of journals in different disciplines will vary
considerably.
 This is because citation practices can vary significantly from one field to
another. The JIF cannot therefore be used to compare journals across
different subject areas.
JCR is used to …
Discover highest-impact journals
Compare a custom selection of journals
Analyze self-citations
Identify review journals
Identify impact factor trend

How is the journal impact factor (JIF)
calculated?
a journal’s impact factor averages the number of citations
received by a journal in a given year by the number of
articles published in the previous two years. For example, a
journal’s JIF for the year 2009 is calculated by taking the
number of citations made in 2009 to the articles published
in the journal in 2007 and 2008 and then dividing by the
total number of articles published in that journal in 2007
and 2008.
This method of calculation will therefore result in a
different JIF each year
Only references in articles within the 10,000+ journals
indexed in Web of Science Journal Citation Reports are
counted in the JIF calculation.
Example: The Annual Review of Nuclear and
Particle Science has the highest impact factor
in JCR’s Nuclear Physics category. Its JIF is
11.964.
Cites in 2009 to items published in 2008 = 101,
plus cites in 2007 = 234, giving a total of 335
Number of items published in 2008 = 13, plus
2007 = 15, giving a total of 28
To calculate you divide the cites to recent
items 335, by the number of recent items 28,
which gives 11.964
a journal’s impact factor averages the number of citations received by a journal in a given year by the number of articles published in the previous two years. For example, a journa
This method of calculation will therefore result in a different JIF each year
Only references in articles within the 10,000+ journals indexed in Web of Science Journal Citation Reports are counted in the JIF calculation.

53
Impact Factor =
Cites in 2009 to 2007 or 2008 papers
Papers published in 2007 or 2008
The impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year
by the total number of articles published in the two previous years.
Impact Factor Calculation
Journal: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
Higher citations rate means your
article has higher chances of getting
cited or read by researchers.
Tells us NOTHING concrete
about any specific paper or specific
author.

What other metrics are available for
journals in my area?
Total cites: The number of times journal articles
published in that year cited articles published in
each listed journal.
5-year impact factor: this is calculated similarly to
the traditional 2-year impact factor but uses a 5-year
rather than a 2-year window. A base of five years
may be more appropriate for journals in certain
fields because the body of citations may not be large
enough to make reasonable comparisons,
publication schedules may be consistently late, or it
may take longer than 2 years to disseminate and
respond to published works.
Immediacy index: the immediacy index tells you
how often articles published in a journal are cited
during their year of publication. This can be an
indication of how "hot" a journal is. It is calculated
by dividing the number of citations to articles
published in a given year by the number of articles
published in that year.
•Cited half life: the cited half life for a journal is the median age of its
items cited in the current JCR year. Half of the citations to the journal
are to items published within the cited half-life. This measures whether
citing continues over time for a journal's content.

55
The immediacy index is calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles
published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year.
Immediacy Index Calculation
Tells you how often
articles published in a
journal are cited during
their year of publication

56
Total cites in 2009: 41+124+654+612+ … +8846 = 15082
50% of the total cites in 2009 = 15082/2 = 7541
Total cites from 2009 to 2000 = 6236 (Cumulative % = 41.35%)
Conclusion: 50% of all citations from this journal cited in the
year 2009 were referred to articles published from over ten
years.
Cited Half-Life Calculation
Cited Journal data show how many citations a journal received in the JCR year.
You use the Journal
Cited Half Life to see
if articles from a
journal that were
published a long time
ago are still being cited.
This shows you if the
journal has a good
track record and was
producing good
articles in the past. A
primary research
journal might have a
longer cited half-life
than a journal that
provides rapid
communication of
current information.

57
Eigenfactor Score & Article Influence Score
Eigenfactor Score
The Eigenfactor™ score of a journal is an estimate of the percentage of time that library users spend with that
journal.
The Eigenfactor™ Score calculation is based on the number of times articles from the journal published in the
past five years have been cited in the JCR year, but it also considers which journals have contributed these citations
so that highly cited journals will influence the network more than lesser cited journals. References from one article
in a journal to another article from the same journal are removed, so that Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by
journal self-citation.
http://www.eigenfactor.org/methods.htm
http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=217750
http://www.eigenfactor.org/methods.pdf

58
Eigenfactor Score & Article Influence Score
Article Influence Score
The Article Influence determines the average influence of a journal's articles over the
first five years after publication. It is calculated by dividing a journal’s Eigenfactor
Score by the number of articles in the journal, normalized as a fraction of all articles in
all publications. This measure is roughly analogous to the 5-Year Journal Impact Factor
in that it is a ratio of a journal’s citation influence to the size of the journal’s article
contribution over a period of five years.
The mean Article Influence Score is 1.00. A score greater than 1.00 indicates that each
article in the journal has above-average influence. A score less than 1.00 indicates that
each article in the journal has below-average influence.

59
Eigenfactor Score & Article
Influence Score
EF:
Cites in {2009} to items published in 2004-
2008, also take into account:
• estimate of the percentage of time that
library users spend with that journal.
• eliminate journal self-citation.
• considers which journals have contributed
these citations so that highly cited journals
will influence the network more than lesser
cited journals.
• calculation included both Science and
Social Science journals.
AI:
A score greater than
1.00 indicates that each
article in the journal has
above-average
influence. A score less
than 1.00 indicates that
each article in the
journal has below-
average influence.
ai is the number of articles published by journal i over the five-year target
window, divided by the total number of articles published by all source
journals over the same five-year window. Notice that a is thus normalized to
sum to 1 and it’s i-th entry specifies the fraction of all published articles that
come from journal i.

Other metrics
Eigenfactor
SNIP: Source Normalized Impact per Paper
IPP: Impact per Publication
SJR : The SCImago journal rank indicator

Journal Eigenfactor
Free web based service, also available within
ISI's journal citation reports.
Provides metrics for journals using data from
ISI's journal citation reports.
The theory behind Eigenfactor metrics is that a single citation from
a high quality journal may hold more value than multiple citations
from more peripheral publications.
The Eigenfactor of a journal is based on the
citations it receives from other journals and
citations from highly ranked journals and given
more weight than others. •Provides metrics for journals using data from ISI's journal citation reports. The
theory behind Eigenfactor metrics is that a single citation from a high quality journal
may hold more value than multiple citations from more peripheral publications. - the
Eigenfactor of a journal is based on the citations it receives from other journals and
citations from highly ranked journals and given more weight than others.

SCImago (SJR)
The SCImago journal rank indicator (SJR).
Free web based service, also available within Scopus.
Provides metrics for journals using data from Scopus.
SCImago uses a similar method to Google's PageRank
algorithm to rank journals - as such it assigns higher value
to citations from more prestigious journals.
Distinctive features
Includes the number of uncited documents.
Includes the percentage of articles showing international
collaboration. The map generator option also maps where
that collaboration occurs regionally.
Includes the h-index.
Compare option - this allows for the comparison of up to
four journals.
Results can be viewed graphically or in tabular form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YarFhyoqeA&feature=youtu.be

SNIP
Source Normalized Impact per Paper
It is defined as the ratio of a journal's citation count per
paper and the citation potential in its subject field. It aims
to allow direct comparison of sources in different subject
fields. Citation potential is shown to vary not only between
journal subject categories – groupings of journals sharing a
research field – or disciplines (e.g., journals in
Mathematics, Engineering and Social Sciences tend to
have lower values than titles in Life Sciences), but also
between journals within the same subject category. For
instance, basic journals tend to show higher citation
potentials than applied or clinical journals, and journals
covering emerging topics higher than periodicals in
classical subjects or more general journals.
SNIP corrects for such differences. Its strengths and
limitations are open to critical debate. All empirical results
are derived from the Scopus abstract and indexing
database. SNIP values are updated once a year, providing
an up-to-date view of the research landscape.
SNIP corrects for such differences. Its strengths and
limitations are open to critical debate. All empirical results
are derived from the Scopus abstract and indexing
database. SNIP values are updated once a year, providing
an up-to-date view of the research landscape.
It helps editors evaluate their journal and understand how
it is performing compared to its competition. SNIP
provides more contextual information, and can give a
better picture of specific fields, such as Engineering,
Computer Science, and/or Social Sciences. It can also help
all academics identify which journals are performing best
within their subject field so they know where to publish.

SJR & SNIP versus IMPACT FACTOR
How do SJR and SNIP compare to the Impact
Factor? They offer new perspectives in Journal
Evaluation that look at the context in which a
journal is performing and normalize for
citation behaviour. Find more information at
www.journalmetrics.com
Both SJR and SNIP are incorporated into
the Scopus Journal Analyzer. This allows you to
select up to 10 journals. Five comparative
graphical representations of the journals are
available, by SJR, SNIP, Ciataions (count),
Documents (articles count) and % not cited.

End of Module 3
Module 3: Journal Ranking and
Analysis
This module highlights the main
journal metrics used to evaluate
journals. It looks in detail at the
Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and how it
is calculated as well as highlighting
additional journal metrics and
emerging journal ranking tools.

Agenda
Module 4: 7 Habits Of Highly Visible
PhD Students and how Social media
can increase the author impact and
open access

Use online services, networks and
communication tools to:
Increase your research impact
Connect with researchers within the same field
Build a reputation in your area
Inform the general public about your research
Discover the latest in your industry or research field
Gather feedback from others – may lead to new
directions / ideas
Showcase your research group, center or institute
Social media can…
promote, connect and disseminate your research to a
wider, non academic audience
potentially increase downloads of your papers (link
from Research Outputs Repository or an open
access journal homepage)
provide context around your research projects
help you engage in discussions with colleagues with
similar research interests, or recent conferences
grant a broader view of your research impact using
new forms of scholarly communication
Twitter is a free, real time information network. Users can 'tweet' small
bits of information to the world. Follow others to discover the latest
information and research.
Facebook is a social media tool that allows users to share a mix of
media formats and aims to connect people with friends and others
who work, study and live around them.

7 Habits Of Highly Visible PhD Students
Habit 1: Upload Slides To Slideshare
Habit 2: Tweet One Of Your Publications
Habit 3: Create A Blog And Write A “My Research”
Page
Habit 4: Write A Blog Post Describing One Of Your
Publications
Habit 5: Answer A Question In ResearchGate
Habit 6: Write A Comment In A LinkedIn Group
Habit 7: Write A Comment In Somebody Else’s Blog
The Internet revolution has given the digital scientists new
tools to create their content and distribute it and to interact with
other scientists.
http://www.nextscientist.com/7-habits-highly-
visible-phd-students/
Seminar on and author impact measures: Assessing your impact (h-index and beyond), December 2015 by Professor Aboul ella HassanienJournal

Habit 1: Upload Slides To Slideshare
Our worked so hard on those slides. All data
were correct, no typos, figures were
distributed harmonically. You even
acknowledged that co-author that didn’t have
the courtesy to read his co-authored
manuscript!
Don’t you think it is a pity to just use them for
15 minutes in that presentation in that sesion
of that conference where no presentation had
anything to do with your research?
It is time to reuse those old slides and put
them to a better service. We are going to
make them available for everyone via
Slideshare.
How many times have you thought: “Oh my, I
don’t understand this paper, I wish I could
attend a presentation of this guy.” Guess
what? Many people think the same of your
paper. so do them and yourself a favor and
make your slides available via the Internet.
You will not only grow your academic footprint, but you will
also help others.

Habit 2: Tweet One Of Your Publications
There are many ways of using Twitter to grow
your academic footprint. The most
straightforward way is of course to tweet
about your work.
Do you have a new publication? Tweet the
tittle or a description together with a link to
the paper on the website of the journal.
Do you have some old publications? It’s time
they see the sunlight again, so tweet about old
papers too.
Extra tip 1: link to the website of the journal
and not to a pdf in your website, so the
counter of viewers and pdf downloads
increases, which gives more reputation to your
work.
Extra tip 2: don’t only tweet about your papers
or only when you have a publication, it makes
you look like a sad scientist or a douchebag.
Extra tip 3: Use a hashtag, so people can
search for it, indicating the topic of your
papers (like #genomics or #stringtheory)

Habit 3: Create A Blog And Write A “My Research” Page
Here at Next Scientist we are great fans of
science blogs as vehicles to grow your
academic footprint. In a blog you can share
your ideas and see the latest post on top of
the timeline. But next to this, you can have
static pages.
You can create a page (a static page, not a
post) with your Research. You can put a link on
the header of the blog so everybody can see it.
In it you can create subpages with your current
projects and also with a list of publications.
Like you see in some lab websites.
.
In this place you can also collect all the output
you have been sharing in the Interwebs, like
presentations and posters. You can upload pdf
files of those that you have already presented
at conferences, so you boss doesn’t get mad
for showing non-published content.
It’s a great way to let people discover the
details of your research and who knows,
maybe start a collaboration because they
found your last project useful for their work

Habit 4: Write A Blog Post Describing One Of Your Publications
Now that you have a blog in place, it’s time to squeeze
the juice out of it.
While tweets disappear soon from the spotlight, the
half-life of a blog post is much larger. And while a
tweet is limited to 140 characters, in a blog post you
don’t have a limit to the size of the text.
You always start writing in your own style, but if you
run out of creativity, try these two types of posts:
Describe a publication in simple words: forget the
correctness and academic language, present your
paper as if you were talking and describing it to
somebody. Focus on the main ideas, innovation,
surprising results, conclusions, or real world
applications.
Show the hidden side of you publication: are there
images you didn’t include in the paper? (You can also
try FigShare) Did you find some cases where your work
flops? Do you have some extra tips for those that want
to extend your work?

Habit 5: Answer A Question In ResearchGate
We all know that the smartest guy in a bar is the
one that answers all the questions. The reality is
that most of the times he is not being asked to
give an answer.
In ResearchGate, a social network for scientists,
other peers ask questions on specific fields of
research. If you give a good answer or point the
person in the right direction, you can expand
your reputation as expert in that field.
A nice feature of this Q&A sites is that people go
with their real names, so answers tend to be of
high quality. No bullshiting or bullying allowed.
The result is that great discussions originate in
such forums.

Habit 6: Write A Comment In A LinkedIn Group
LinkedIn has a hidden gem. It is not that you can
have an online CV, which is cool. It is not that you
can export your CV as pdf, or that you can find
science events, not at all.
LinkedIn Groups is the best place to find people
interested in a very specific topic. Do you like
Cloud computing or Soft computing groups?
There’s a group for that. Alternative careers for
PhD students? Also a group. Do you like Next
Scientist? There is also a Next Scientist group in
LinkedIn.
You can have a look at the different
conversations in the group and decide to
contribute with a comment. Remember, be
helpful and avoid criticisms and confrontation.
Once you feel more comfortable you can initiate
your own conversations, for instance by … ta
daaaa … sharing your new publication or one of
your blog posts. You might get new readers for
your papers or visitors to your blog. And, some
feedback.
An extra advantage is that group members can
see your LinkedIn profile and make sure you are
the real deal.

Habit 7: Write A Comment In Somebody Else’s Blog
Remember the 2 basic ideas to grow your
academic footprint: reuse and promote your
content, and be helpful. Keeping those in mind
you can begin your comment with some praise
like “Hey man, great post, very interesting”.
Next you can be helpful by contributing to the
discussion with “A different way of doing A is
using B, which can help you circumvent issue
bla bla”. Last you can connect the blog post
with some of your previous work (or
somebody else’s) by saying “We had a look at
a similar problem and we found out that … You
can see a published paper on that here (link)”.
By the way, remember to sign the comment
with your real name.

Open access publishing: an introduction
The open access movement has existed for a number
of years now, with the first formal international
statement being put forward as the Budapest Open
Access Initiative in 2002. This was followed by
the Berlin Declaration, proclaimed at the Conference
on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and
Humanities in 2003.
The principle behind open access is to make
research content freely available online. This
content can include anything from journal
articles that have been through the peer
review process, to so called 'grey' literature
that is not published through conventional
channels.
The open access movement can be broken
down into two different approaches which
complement each other:
•Open access publishing (Gold road)
•Author pay to publisher in OA journals that make their article freely
accessible on line immediately upon publication
•Open access archiving (Green road)
•Authors publish in a subscription journal, but make their articles
freely accessible on line usually by deposing them in a Digital Library

How to use open access publishing
Authors can make their work open access by
one of two routes.
The first option is to pay the publisher a fee to
make the article free-to-view from the date of
publication (gold road).
The second is to self-archive an electronic,
peer-reviewed copy of the journal article on an
institutional or subject based repository once
the publisher's stated embargo period has
elapsed (green road)

Issues in the field of open access
BENEFITS:
Visibility - material is widely available free of charge. Increases
dissemination and impact of research. Increases the profile of the
author on a global basis.
Impact - there is evidence of enhanced citation rates for open
access material. New bibliographic services are being developed to
keep track of citations to papers in repositories.
Research output can be easily retrieved via an internet search,
whatever the format.
Although most research is publicly funded, the results are not
generally available to members of the public. Several fund holders
have therefore introduced a mandate to require, or strongly
recommend that research output is deposited in an open access
repository.
Authors retain ownership of their content allowing them
to reuse and repurpose their research for inclusion in
websites, teaching material, presentations, databases and so
on.
Improves scholarly communication and collaboration
opportunities.
Material is securely archived with a stable internet
address.
Gives the author a central archive of work, useful for the
REF.
Open access may reduce delays in publication, depending
on how the peer review process is implemented.

Issues in the field of open access
DRAWBACK
Sometimes the author can only deposit a final draft,
rather than the original article, within an institutional
repository because of copyright restrictions. This
could result in missing or incorrect material.
The growing use of repositories has led to concerns
however over a lack of clarity on what content has
been peer reviewed.
The variation in publishers' policies regarding self
archiving poses difficulties for researchers wishing
to disseminate their findings and for repository
administrators who must ensure that they are
working within the limitations of copyright law and
license agreements.
Are Open Access journals of the same quality as the
traditional peer reviewed model?
Journals that introduce open access will lose
subscriptions, some may go out of business. However,
open access is not about reforming publication but
about making research available to all.
There are fears for the economic security of small
learned societies who are also publishers if the
growing use of repositories undermines the income
they derive from journal publication.
Search facilities may be better through a publisher
than Google so when using open access you may need
to allow more time for literature searching

End of Module 4
Module 4 :7 Habits Of Highly Visible
Ph.D. Students

Aim
Lecture for researchers and graduate students at Egyptian universities to increase awareness of
the importance of publication and scientific research and how to increase the researchers
weight, its calculation, and calculation of magazines weight and how to calculate new weights
that differ from the impact of the magazines and tips for students attic studies on how to
increase citation of the published research papers and How to use open access publishing. In
addition discuss the Issues in the field of open access including its advantages and
disadvantages

Journal and author impact measures Assessing your impact (h-index and beyond)

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Journal and author impact measures Assessing your impact (h-index and beyond)