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Calculate Your Academic Footprint: Get Started

About This Guide

Developing skills to determine an individual's scholarly impact is becoming essential to advancing an academic career (Hirsch, 2007).

This Calculate Your Academic Footprint guide:

  • Overviews a process for creating a master publication list and master citation list
  • Explains how these master lists are possible through data available in citation-tracking databases, and through the support of reference management software (such as RefWorks)
  • Provides a process for keeping your citation counts current and relatively self-sustaining over time
  • Describes how you can calculate a more robust and accurate h-index

 


1 Hirsch, J. E. (2007). Does the h index have predictive power? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(49), 19193-19198. doi:10.1073/pnas.0707962104 

*Before You Begin*

Consider using a web-based research evaluation tool such as InCites (based on Web of Science data) or SciVal (based on Scopus data). These tools are designed to capture your bibliometric data and can provide a wide range of research impact indicators. However, they will not be as comprehensive as the process described in this guide.

Learn more about bibliometrics and research impact indicators in the following research guides:

The Process

The process offered by this guide enables authors to proactively produce an accurate publication list (the 'master publication list') and to capture accurate citation counts for these publications (via a 'master citation list').

This flow chart captures the major steps of the process:Process flow chart. See complete description below the image.

The process described by this flowchart begins with creating a list of your publications and then identifying the databases that contain them. From here you gather citations and set e-alerts in Web of Science, Scopus, and/ or Google Scholar. The next step involves using a reference management software like RefWorks to create current publication lists and compile current citation counts. Compiling your current citation counts will help you to calculate your h-index.

Bibliometrics and Research Impact Librarian

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Laura Bredahl
She/Hers
Contact:
LIB 320
Dana Porter Library
University of Waterloo
519 888 4567 x40038
Social: Twitter Page

White Paper on Bibliometrics

The White Paper, "Measuring Research Output Through Bibliometrics", provides a high-level review of bibliometrics, and provides recommended practices for working with bibliometric data.

Link to Measuring Research Output through Bibliometrics White Paper in UWSpace

The White Paper is not a policy paper; instead, it defines and summarizes evidence that addresses appropriate use of bibliometric data at the University of Waterloo.

For further information connected to this white paper, please contact:

iap-bibl@uwaterloo.ca

or

Working Group on Bibliometrics
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo ON Canada N2L 3G1