Evaluating scholarly publications

Evaluation tools on the university level:

Publication Forum, Research Assessment Excercise (RAE), international rankings (e.g. the Shangai list)

Tools for evaluating the impact of research groups and researchers:

Publication frequency, citations, academic networks, quality of publication channels.
Indicators: h-index, g-index

The Hirsch-index was developed by Professor Jorge E Hirsch in 2005. The index measures the researcher’s publication effectiveness and the significance of the publications. The larger the h-index is the greater is the number of the researcher's publications that have been cited. 

To be observed regarding the h-index:

• The advantage of the h-index is its stability, since a few publications that have been cited many times do not greatly affect the index value. Publications that have not been cited at all, or only a few times, do not affect the index value at all
• The h-index varies in different disciplines, which means that researchers h-indexes of different disciplines are not usually comparable
• The h-index is usually higher for researchers with a long career researching, than for young researchers at the start of their careers
• The h-index can also be used when evaluating journals

If you are  using the name of the author or organisation as a search word, please be careful with your search. In order to find all the relevant articles, it is recommended to pay attention to the following things:

Further problems may be caused by:

• Asian names, names with Scandic letters, multipart names
• Researchers who have changed their last name
• Names with special characters (diacritics, apostrophes)

Altmetrics proposes a non-traditional alternative for bibliometrics. Altmetrics cover not just citation counts, but also other aspects of the impact of a work, such as how many data and knowledge bases refer to it, article views, downloads, or mentions in social media, blogs and news media.

Altmetric services to track your articles visibility online:

Some databases, such as Scopus, provide altmetric tools for tracking how many times a particular article has been mentioned in the social networks. In Scopus, the article information includes an Altmetric icon as well as an altmetric score and other altmetric indicators, such as social media mentions or readership count in Mendeley.