Engqvist and Frommen (DOI) conclude in their recent article in Frontiers TREE that it is difficult to manipulate your own h-index through self-citations.
According to Thomson Scientific, my h-index is not worth mentioning in a Nature Network blog 3. Could I manipulate this?
Well, two articles (one on facilitation of tree regeneration and one on secondary dispersal of seeds) need one more citation each. I could go downstairs and promote those articles to some of my colleagues. I could finally write that summarizing article on my PhD thesis and solve the issue through self-citation. Or I can wait for genuine citations by other foresters interested in restoration of forest on semiarid hillslopes (fat chance).
In any case, it doesn’t help me a lot. If I manage to increase my h from 3 to 4, the next article needs four citations to get my h to 5.
I am not sure someone will look up my h-index to evaluate me anyway. A reviewer (say, someone who is going to decide on my latest postdoc application) is much more likely to look me up in Web of Science and not find my articles in the 258 results returned after a Author=(Aerts R) search. Including the name of my promoter doesn’t help, because my letter in Frontiers was a solo project, in an other publication his name is misspelled in Web of Science, and three more papers are still not listed in WOS. And because ResearcherID is explicitly linked to WOS, those three missing papers are not on my ResearcherID page either…
My solution? For papers, a good personal publication list on the webpage of our research group (note the nifty ‘publication profile’ I added above), and an up to date record of other stuff on the net on ClaimID
(These issues have been discussed before on NN, but an update doesn’t hurt, does it?)
Of course, an up to date list of your publications on NN is a good idea too.
Bob (h=9)
Update: I just received a citation alert for the dispersal paper (by Osem et al. in Isr. J. Plant Sci. 55 (1): 35-43 2007). One to go:)
Keeping an up to date publication lists personally is a good option indeed, and there are several options as pointed out by Martin Fenner. A personal manageable listing gives you some extra options, such as your ‘publication profile’ on your group’s site.
If you could feed your off line database (you can also keep your database up to date manually) with the number of citations per publication… you would be able to do a WoS-like citation report yourself.
Of course, such self made citation report would only be as up to date and complete as the database(s) you feed your own database on, but at least it might give some more ‘value’ to your own listing, then just the listing itself (?).
Wouter (h=0 according to WoS) (h=1 according to myself ;-))
Psst, I’ve just checked – the journal is TREE, not Frontiers.
(I wish it was, but the letter on the advantages of being evergreen in TREE is written by Rien Aerts, the ISI highly-cited one…)
{I meant the Engqvist and Frommen paper}
(Right, edited:)
You can also track journals (and countries) using Scimago, though I am not sure that it is exactly right for your purpose here.
Great tool Maxine!
My h-index is equal to that of Bhutan in the subject category ‘Forestry’.
;-)
I’ve discovered a new forum on Nature Network called Citation in Science. I think it is great to have a focus to discuss the issues in Allan’s topic list (at the link). Please join if you are interested in continuing the conversation there.