If you click on a researcher’s profile on google scholar (granted they’ve registered!), you get a complete collection of their published work. A bit further on the right hand side is the holy ‘author metrics,’ showcasing the impact their research has had over the years. The graph that you see here is of the professor emeritus of psychology, Paul Bloom. His research interests are language acquisition, morality, and religion! Let’s breakdown his stats.
Total Citations: A citation occurs when another academic publication references your work. The total citation shows how many times all of the researcher’s publications have been cited. It can help indicate the reach of their research and how much overall value it adds to the scientific community- an astonishing 50,915 citations in this case! However, it could also be that a single or a few of Prof. Bloom’s work got most of the citations and account for a large proportion of his total citations. This also includes self-citations i.e., a researcher citing their own previous work.
h-index: This metric overcomes the shortcomings of total citations and measures both quantity (no. of papers) and quality (how often the papers are cited). An h-index of 93 indicates that Prof. Bloom has published at least 93 articles that have each been cited at least 93 times. It’s safe to say that he is not a one-hit wonder (no surprises here!) and has rightfully earned the title of ‘Professor Emeritus’, an honorary title given to academicians for their outstanding contributions.
i-10 index: i-10 is a simple google scholar metric that counts the total publications which have at-least 10 citations. Why 10 you may ask? This is because it’s pretty straight forward, h-index is complex and takes a lot of years to build, hence this is a reliable metric for early career academicians.
Word of caution: It may sound contradictory but do not treat author metrics as exam scores or a measure of a researcher’s worth as it’s much more nuanced. Citations pattern vary across disciplines, senior researchers have had more time to build up their metrics, and the type of publications (review articles get more citations than original research articles) and the author’s contribution (order of byline) etc. also need to be considered.
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