A review of the characteristics of 108 author-level bibliometric indicators

Abstract

An increasing demand for bibliometric assessment of individuals has led to a growth of new bibliometric indicators as well as new variants or combinations of established ones. The aim of this review is to contribute with objective facts about the usefulness of bibliometric indicators of the effects of publication activity at the individual level. This paper reviews 108 indicators that can potentially be used to measure performance on individual author-level, and examines the complexity of their calculations in relation to what they are supposed to reflect and ease of end-user application. As such we provide a schematic overview of author-level indicators, where the indicators are broadly categorised into indicators of publication count, indicators that qualify output (on the level of the researcher and journal), indicators of the effect of output (effect as citations, citations normalized to field or the researcher’s body of work), indicators that rank the individual’s work and indicators of impact over time. Supported by an extensive appendix we present how the indicators are computed, the complexity of the mathematical calculation and demands to data-collection, their advantages and limitations as well as references to surrounding discussion in the bibliometric community. The Appendix supporting this study is available online as supplementary material.