Scholarly performance is measured in a number of ways and bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse publications. Generally, this is based on the ranked quality of the journal. The analysis of citations is the most common bibliometric method. Bibliometrics work best in the Sciences but less well for the Humanities, Engineering and Social Sciences. Moreover, some disciplines such as Computing are more dependent on conference proceedings than journals. Bibliometrics are useful only as an indicator of scholarly performance.
It is important for a researcher to know what their metrics look like. Register for an account in Scival, then search under your name and you will get a complete analysis of your citation performance. Please remember that Scival analysis is based on Scopus and not Web of Science. Google Scholar Citations will also display your citations but ensure your publications in Google Scholar are not duplicated. Google Scholar is not as reliable a source as Scival. However, you can use a free software program called Publish or Perish to manage your Google citations. If you want a statistical analysis for yourself, School or Research Unit or any assistance with bibliometrics please contact Yvonne Desmond
Bibliometrics are also used to show how institutions, groups and countries are performing. There are many kinds of patterns that can be determined from this analysis such as who has influence, what are the emerging areas of research, who might be potential collaborators and what is the impact of individual/group research output? At the end of the day, Bibliometrics is based on the publications lists of academic authors so make sure the listing under your name is accurate and includes all relevant publications.
An emerging new set of metrics are Altmetrics which looks at article rather than journal metrics and measures non-traditional forms of impact. Arrow@TU Dublin has an altmetrics tool called PlumX and its presence is indicated by the =multicoloured widget. PlumX tracks usage (downloads), captures (bookmarks, favourites), mentions (blog posts, news stories), social media (tweets, shares, likes etc) and citations (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search).
Another metric that may be of interest is the H Index. The H index is not useful for early career researchers as it is based on the number of publications an author has. So for example a H Index of 30 means that the author has written 30 papers where each paper has received 30 citations or more. Quote your H index in context of your total number of publications and be aware that it measures consistency more than quality.