Academic Performance

Increasingly metrics are being used as a measure of research impact or research influence of an individual scholar or a research group. Metrics must always be considered in context (citation patterns vary in different disciplines) and should never be used as the only measure.

You can use metrics to illustrate your track record when applying for grants and promotion. If it is difficult to search for your publications (other authors share your name and initials; or inconsistent use of your name and initials, or mistakes in the database records) it may be useful to use ResearcherID.

Different types of metrics commonly used

• Citation analysis – the statistical analyses of citation counts 
• Bibliometrics – broader term includes publication counts, citation analyses and content analyses 
• Webometrics – includes download counts and number and type of hyperlinks 
• CiteSpace is a freely available Java application for visualizing and analyzing trends and patterns in scientific literature. It is designed as a tool for progressive knowledge domain visualization (Chen, 2004).

Let's make science metrics more scientific Nature 464, 488-489 (25 March 2010) doi:10.1038/464488a; Published online 24 March 2010