Did you miss this...?

Did you miss our Insider's Insight into understanding the complex world of bibliometrics? Released just before the start of the holiday season it provides a simple-to-read guide to the subject. Do you know your h-index from your m-quotient? Quantitative analysis of the scientific literature has changed dramatically over the last decade and bibliometrics has become an important aspect of the assessment of your scientific productivity. Despite there being a proliferation of bibliometric parameters, their actual meaning and how they might be used is not generally well understood. Have you got a grasp of altmetrics because it thinks it has a grasp of what is 'popular' here.

Familiarity with bibliometric parameters can aid you in the effective quantitative assessment of publications generated by individual researchers and research teams as well as journals. We offer some insights from the Niche team on how you may interpret these parameters and employ them effectively. Do you understand the current issues with the commonly cited Impact Factor? Do you know which tools are available to you? Bibliometric analyses adds a quantitative aspect to an otherwise somewhat qualitative process - working out whether your research was impactful. Moving beyond simple tallies of publication totals and impact factors, modern analytic tools have emerged to improve on prior, manual methods of assessment. Under the right circumstances the ability to utilise this information can provide you with a powerful insight into specific aspects of the publishing landscape.