Scopus Tools for Tracking Scholarly OutputScopus delivers many tools that may be helpful for understanding a researcher's scholarly output. The Scopus Author Search (under the Author Search tab on the Scopus search page) offers a search by author name plus affiliation or place of publication. Author record details give a summary of the publication output for this author, including: variant names the author has published under, a list of all her articles, the total number of times this author has been cited, the date range of publications, and a list of the journal titles and the number of articles by this author for each journal. Scopus also now provides the h-index for the author.
The h-index was recently developed by J.E. Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, and was designed to measure the scholarly impact of a researcher's publications regardless of the impact factor of the journals the researcher published in. Hirsch defines the h index as follows:
A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.
J.E. Hirsch, for example, has an H-factor of 14. Of the 40 articles Hirsch published since 1996, 14 of them have at least 14 citing articles. Peter Brimblecombe, Professor in Atmospheric Chemistry at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia and Editor-in-Chief of Atmospheric Environment, is a frequent user of the h-index in order to evaluate individual and institutional performance. “The h-index is a useful first step in evaluation before looking at published output in greater detail and a useful measure of cumulative impact, because it avoids the long trail of recent or poorly cited papers.” Note that Scopus can only determine an h-index for articles published after 1995, since Scopus only provides thorough citation tracking back to that date.
These types of detailed information can also be compiled for a group of authors, i.e., an an academic department. Other functions in Scopus allow you to set up an e-mail alert each time an author publishes a new article or when someone cites a particular author or paper.
For more about the h-index read "An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output," PNAS 102(46):16569-16572, November 15 2005.
Date(s): 6/5/2007
Time:
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