Bibliometrics can help illustrate the value of an individual researcher’s scholarly publishing. The main databases available for detailed analysis are Web of Science and Scopus. The CIRAD website details the limits of these indicators, which are based on quantitative rather than qualitative data.

The h-index

Introduced in 2005 by Jorge Hirsch, the h-index quantifies an individual’s scientific research output in terms of citations and papers. Researchers will have an index of h if h of their articles have been cited at least h times each.

While the h-index is a valuable tool, it has its limitations:

• It varies considerably across disciplines;
• It is strongly correlated with career years;
• It does not account for the number or order of authors of a paper;
• It ignores excess citations.

Other metrics include the Scimago Journal Rank, the Eigenfactor or the G index.

Altmetrics

Altmetrics (alternative metrics) measure the attention that your research receives online. For example, HAL provides browsing statistics and downloads; ImpactStory uses ORCID to compute your data.

Various software tools are available to conduct bibliometric analysis. All databases have limits and drawbacks:

• Their coverage of scientific and scholarly literature remains partial and selective;
• Bibliographic records often contain redundancies and duplicates;
• All citations are weighed equally, regardless of their actual significance or value;
• The broader societal impact of research is frequently overlooked or excluded from evaluation.

The University provides access to the following tools:

• Scopus (1994): indexes over 20,000 journals and 150,000 books.
• Web of Science (1992): indexes 12,000 journals and 148,000 conference proceedings.

Google Scholar (2004) also provides free access to scholarly literature available on the web.