Monitoring Metrics

FemaleScienceProfessor polls her readers who have published papers to decipher whether the majority of them collect their citation statistics regularly. "Mostly I am wondering how often we are checking on our own citation data, no matter what we think of the significance (or lack thereof) of these data," she writes. Out of 469 respondents so far, 28 percent say that they check their citation statistics "as often as possible," 16 percent do it "quite regularly, but not obsessively," 41 percent examine their citations "every once in a while, when I think of it," 23 percent check them "maybe once a year, if that," and 14 percent say they never check. When asked whether they knew their h-index value, readers were divided almost evenly among "yes, I know exactly what it is," "sort of," and "no, I have no idea," with 33, 28, and 39 percent of the responses, respectively. FSP also wonders whether her fellow researchers subscribe to citation alert services to "check up on the citation data of certain colleagues, whether or not your intentions are good?"