Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research 
FOSTER - Metrics Worshop by Nathalie Cornée is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 
 Metrics 
Quiz - What’s your field of expertise? 
• a) Humanities 
 
• b) Social Sciences 
 
• c) Science 
 
• d) still thinking… 
What tools are available to us to measure 
the quality of a paper? 
 
Established Metrics: 
1) Impact factor 
2) Citation Analysis 
3) Hirsh Index 
 
Emerging Metrics 
1) Article Level Metrics (ALMs) /Altmetrics  
 
 
Research Landscape 
Research Impact 
Citation Analysis 
• Scholarly Communication 
(provide peer recognition) 
 
• Scientific Evaluation 
 
• LIVE: Scopus / Web of Science 
Quiz - Citation Analysis 
 
Can you estimate how many papers in academic journals 
are never cited? 
 
• 47% 
 
• 65% 
 
• 90% 
 
 
PLoS example: 
Citation Analysis (Reject errors) 
 
 
 
 
Citation Analysis (Accept errors) 
RETRACTED 
Journal Impact Factor 
 
 

Journal Impact Factor – Subject Categories 
Molecular Biology       History and Philosophy of Science 
Quiz -what is the H-Index (Hirsh Index)? 
• a) the equivalent N such that you have N papers each of 
which have at least N citations  
 
• b) the largest N such that you have N papers each of 
which have at least N citations  
 
• C) the largest N such that you N papers each of which 
have more than N citations 
H-Index 
• Bob is a senior researcher in Microscopy. He’s published 
prolifically over his career: 127 papers, 98 of which 
never got cited, 19 no more than 5 times, while the 
remaining 8 got cited more than 8 times  
   he’s h-index is of 8 
 
• Early career researcher Colin (also in the field of 
Microscopy) has published two papers only but they were 
both outstanding and attracted many citations (72 and 
45 respectively over the last 12 months)  
• -> he’s h-index is of 2 
Tools to retrieve h-index 
Alternatives to the h-index: 
• G-index 
 
• individual h-index 
 
• universal h-index 
 
• H10 index 
 
• M-index 
 
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor 
Identifier) 
• How do you distinguish 
between: 
 A. Smith, Anna Smith, 
and Anna L. Smith  
 
• ORCID is a unique 
author ID that 
distinguishes your work 
online from that of 
researchers with the 
same or similar names. 
It is a  tool that allow 
researchers to link their 
research works with 
their names and thus 
gain full credit for their 
own work 
 
www.orcid.org  
Google Scholars Citations 
Emerging metrics 
Quiz - what do altmetrics intend to highlight? 
 
a) quality 
 
b) quantity 
 
c) attention 
Why academics use social media? 
Both figures reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature (Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network), copyright (2014) 
Article Level Metrics Tools 
Further ex: Pettifer’s case 
Open Access = GREATER IMPACT 
References mentioned today: 
Ware, M. 2012 (3rd ed). STM report: An overview of scientific and 
 scholarly journal publishing 
LSE Impact Blog, 2014. 3 key measures of academic influence  
Curry, Stephen. Reciprocal Space, 2013. Sick of Impact Factor 
Lozano, George. LSE Impact Blog, 2012. The demise of the Impact Factor: The 
strength of the relationship between citation rates and IF is down to levels 
last seen 40 years ago 
Cave, R. 2012. Article impact. Charleston Conference. 
Costas,R (et al). CWTS Working Paper Series,2014.   
Do ‘altmetrics’ correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of altmetric 
indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary  
perspective 
Writing for Research 
Amsen, Eva. F1000 Research Blog, 2014.What is open peer review 
Swan, Alma, 2010. The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to 
date. 
 
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME! 
 
 
 
QUESTIONS 
 
 
 
   
 
  Nathalie Cornée 
   LSE Open Access Officer and Information Research Analyst 
   n.f.cornee@lse.ac.uk (@NathalieCornee)