Metrics and altmetrics

Metrics can be a useful tool to help track the attention received by outputs. They are relatively easy to record and measure and provide a reasonably quick and simple way to compare research. However, metrics on their own are never sufficient to assess research fairly. More information on metrics and on how to use them responsibly are available on the Metrics Hub. As a signatory to the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) the University does not support the use of journal-level metrics (such as the impact factor) and they are not available within myPublications.

myPublications collates and continually updates output-level citation and altmetric data. These are displayed in the Metrics tab of the output record.

Citations: different online databases (e.g. Dimensions, Web of Science, Scopus or Google Scholar) track how many times an output has been cited by other outputs indexed within its own database. Since each database covers a slightly different set of journals and subject disciplines, the citation counts will differ between them. No one service will ever capture every citation. myPublications shows the citation counts from Dimensions, Scopus, Web of Science and EPMC. If the output has not been found in one of those databases, then there will not be a metric. The counts are regularly updated but may lag slightly behind those shown on the database website.

Altmetrics: track online activity to reveal how research is being shared and discussed both within the academic community and beyond. They are another way to assess the attention received by an output. Click on the ring to see the detail.

h-index: your h-index is displayed on your home page. myPublications calculates this from citation information that it explicitly holds against your outputs from each online database. You may sometimes see discrepancies between the h-index in a citation database such as Web of Science or Scopus and those in myPublications. In most cases, the difference will be resolved when the h-index is periodically updated. In other cases, it's because output records from the online databases may be missing from your profile.