Author metrics

Author metrics are measurements or benchmarks which assist in demonstrating your research impact. Common metrics include:

• Volume of publications and citation counts
• Performance compared to others in your field
• Journal quartile rankings
• H-index

Citation rates can be affected by:

• Type of publication and language
• Refutation and self-citations
• Subject area you publish in
• Publication schedule and journal reputation

Key sources

For other measures of impact including social media, new media and industry impact see:

All academic staff should have the following three author identifiers.

This assists with author disambiguation by linking research outputs to the correct author, reducing administrative burden, while ensuring data accuracy and discoverability of research. Also where possible publish under a consistent name.

Staff homepage badges

To add your ORCiD, Scopus Author ID and ResearcherID badges contact:

Check and claim any automatically generated author profiles. Then create your Web of Science Researcher profile for accurate metrics.

Key steps

1. Create an personal account and login (top right)
2. Select the Researchers option
3. Search by family name and initial (Name search) or ORCiD

3. Open relevant author profiles from the results
4. Check your publications and then Claim my record
5. Multiple profiles? Select each and View as combined record
6. Open My Web of Science (left menu)
7. Select Create to create your official Web of Science Researcher profile - you will be assigned a unique ResearcherID
8. Edit to add your publications

Top tips

• Check regularly and add any newly indexed publications
• Multiple profiles? If not claimed, merge using Merge Records

In depth help

Check to see if you have an Scopus Author ID which is automatically generated. If you have multiple profiles request to merge these.

Key steps

1. Create a personal account or log into your Scopus account
2. Select the Author option
3. Search by author name or ORCiD
   
    
4. From the results list select your author profile
5. Check for:
   • Potential author matches and request to merge with author
   • your publication list and Edit profile to make changes
6. Link with your ORCiD using the Connect to ORCiD function

In depth help

Cite counts display on Staff Home Pages when the output has been cited one or more times in a database. Cite counts from Web of Science and Scopus are refreshed daily as part of a scheduled process. Altmetric scores are refreshed around May and November. BIP (Business Intelligence and Planning) manage the University’s Altmetric subscription.

In your Web of Science Researcher profile any highly cited papers and hot papers are listed in the research outputs record under Citation network. Highly cited papers also appear under the Awards section.

What are these?

Definitions from

Create a profile to display your publications and show citations, h-index and i10-index.

Please note that while citation rates tend to be higher, this may be due to duplication and author misidentification.

Key steps

1. In Google Scholar, sign in to or create a Google account.
2. Click on 'My Profile' (top left).
3. Fill in your details. Enter your UniSA email in the 'Email for verification' field so your affiliation can be verified. Click next.
4. You will see groups of publications written by authors with similar names. Add all the publications you have written.
5. You can also search for and add publications using the search box.
6. Once you have added all your publications, Google Scholar will ask you to select what to do when publication data changes. Either select to have updates applied automatically, or to review them beforehand.

Top Tips

• Use a personal email as your Google account login so you can still access and edit your profile even if you change institutions.
• Verify your affiliation through the link sent to your UniSA email after creating the account.
• Make your profile public if you want it to appear in Google Scholar search results.
• Check regularly and add any recently indexed publications and remove any that have been added to your profile by mistake.

Helpful links

Some subject databases include citation counts and downloads for individual publications.

These citation counts may be drawn from one database or multiple databases on the same platform. For example, many databases available via the ProQuest platform include times cited counts drawn from the complete suite of ProQuest databases.