Skip to Main Content

Research Impact Guide: Author Impact (h-index)

Use this guide to find information about: Overview of Research Metrics; Journal Impact Factor; Author Impact (h-index); Researcher Profile & Alternative Metrics

What is an h-index?

The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. The index attempts to measure both the scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist. It is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that was received in other people's publications.

An h-index of 10 means that the author has at least 10 publications that each have been cited at least 10 times.

Do not make cross-discipline comparisons of the h-index as citation and publication behaviour differs in different fields.

Find your h-index using Scopus

Open Scopus, then: 
  • Click on the Author search tab. Enter the Author's name in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first and/or second name, enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith JT)
  • To ensure accuracy, enter Cape Peninsula University of Technology in the affiliation field. 
  • Click Search and then on the relevant profile.  Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed. If you have worked at more than one institution, your name may appear twice with 2 separate H-Index ratings.  Select the check box next to each relevant profile, and click Show documents.
View Author Metrics in Scopus video below:

Citation Analysis

Citation analysis involves counting the number of times an article is cited by other works to measure the impact of a publication or author.  There is no single citation analysis tool, however, that collects all publications and their cited references.  For a thorough analysis of the impact of an author or a publication, one needs to look in multiple databases to find all possible cited references. Scopus and Google Scholar can be used to identify cited works.

Search for cited references in Google Scholar, which provide a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, produce a graph for the citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name, e.g., Professor Johannes Cronje.

Find your h-index using Google Scholar

Google Scholar Citations
Use your google (gmail) account to create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  This will indicate the number of times your articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar. It's your choice whether you make your profile public or private but when you make it public, you can link to it from own webpages. Your h-index will be automatically calculated.

Harzing's Publish or Perish (PoP)
Publish or Perish searches Google Scholar.  After searching by your name, deselect from the list of articles retrieved those that you did not author.  Your h-index will appear at the top of the tool.  Note: This tool must be downloaded to use.

Watch the video, citation tracking with Google Scholar:

UA-89927696-1