Bibliometric indicators
Common indicators
Three common bibliometric indicators referred to and provided by various citation resources include the following:
Citation Count:
The number of times a document has been cited by other documents
h-index:
This value attempts to take into account both the number of documents you’ve produced, as well as the citations those documents have received.
The h-index is defined as follows:
“A scientist has index h if h of his or her Np papers have at least h citations each and the other (Np - h) papers have ≤ h citations each” (Hirsch, 2005, p. 16569).
Note: Due to different citation practices between disciplines, researchers from different disciplines may have very different h-index values and should not be compared. Additionally, since citations accrue over time, the h-index of an early career researcher should not be compared to that of a more seasoned scholar. For more information about issues surrounding h-index use in research assessment, see this Scholarly Communications Lab video.
How do you calculate your h-index?
List your documents in order of decreasing citation count. Work your way down through the list and find the hth ranked document for which you have at least that same number of citations.
In the example below, your h-index would be 4, because four of your papers have been cited at least four times. Your h-index is not 5 because five of your papers have not been cited at least five times.
| Rank | Citation count |
|---|---|
| 1 | 24 |
| 2 | 15 |
| 3 | 15 |
| 4 | 7 |
| 5 | 1 |
i10-index:
A Google-defined metric, the i-10 index is a measure of “the number of articles with at least ten citations” (Google, 2010).
Additional Resources:
For a more comprehensive list of Research Impact Metrics, see the Metrics Toolkit created by Robin Champieux, Heather Coates and Stacy Konkiel.
In 2024, Concordia University signed DORA, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. See DORA’s guidance document on the responsible use of quantitative indicators in research assessment.
The University of Waterloo provides an explanation of the appropriate and inappropriate use of different bibliometric parameters in their White Paper: Measuring Research Outputs Through Bibliometrics.
