Metrics

Real-time data retrieved from Google Scholar

  • Overall citations count: is the sum of the citations received by each document written by the author searched.
  • Number of publications: is the total number of documents retrieved for the specified author.
  • Average number of citations per publication: it's the ratio between the overall citations count and the number of publications.
  • Signal to noise ratio: it's the ratio between the number of publications that contributes to the computation of h-index and g-index (i.e. those that have received at least one citation), and the total number of publications.
    The aim of this metric is to somehow estimate the quality of the work of a researcher compared to the number of publications he wrote.
  • H-index: it's the Hirsch index, described in: Hirsch, J. E. (2005). "An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output".
    Basically, a scholar with an index of h has published h papers each of which has been cited by others at least h times.
  • G-index was introduced by Leo Egghe in: "Theory and practice of the g-index", Scientometrics, Vol. 69, No 1 (2006), pp. 131-152.
    Given a set of articles ranked in decreasing order of the number of citations that they received, the g-index is the (unique) largest number such that the top g articles received (together) at least g^2 citations.
For some pre-processed authors:
  • Top citers: it's a list of those that have cited the specified author the most.
    Users can click on the checkboxes to exclude one or more of them, in order to see how the indexes change without their citations.
    The idea is to see whether the citations come only from people "known" by the specified author (i.e. co-authors, himself) or, conversely, the author is cited by people from different departments, organizations, universities.
  • Top co-authors: it's the list of those that more often have co-authored a publication with the specified author.
    Users can click on the checkboxes to exclude one or more of them, in order to see how the number of citations changes excluding those received by works written with the checked co-author.
    This aims to be an indicator of the independence of the author.
  • H-index and g-index without self citations: self citations are subtracted to the total number of citations, then the two indexes are recomputed.
    This is used to see how much the self-citations weigh on the assessment of the specified author.
  • Scholar Factor: SF=(H Factor)+ (Grant/Manuscript Review Factor/20)+ (Annotations/Software/Datasets Factor/5)+ (Web Factor/5).
    where:
    H Factor is as it is now,the number of papers cited more than H times,thus, an H factor of 20 indicates that an author has 20 papers cited more than 20 times. Grant/Manuscript Review Factor is the accumulative number of authenticated grant and paper reviews you have done (data provided to the grant funding agencies and journals); 20 reviews increases your SF by 1. Annotations/Software/Datasets Factor is the accumulative number of authenticated entries you have made in a public database, for example, microarray datasets, gene sequences, macromolecular structures, or software entries you have added to an open access archive. If n scientists were involved in making the entry, you get 1/n of an entry; 5 entries increase your SF by 1. Annotation of a genome should likely count more than a gene, and so the amount of work performed also needs to be included here, but you get the idea. Web Factor is the number of authenticated blog posts, wiki postings, etc., you make that show x or more links to them (a measure of their value), where x is to be determined; 50 entries increases your SF by 1.