Author: Mª Amor Pérez-Rodríguez – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

Google is a powerful database in which it fits everything. That is its main strength, but also constitutes one of its weaknesses. In the academic field, Google Scholar is a search engine that collects cites, links to books and chapters, articles of scientific journals, communications and reports in congresses, scientific-technical reports, bibliographical reviews, academic works and different kinds of documents and files that have been uploaded to repositories (even academic programs).

The visibility of scientific production is a value in raise in the academy. Therefore, that the tool Google Scholar Metrics (GSM) has become an important resource both for researchers as well as for the journals, since it permits to establish the impact index of authors and scientific publications, from the cites that are collected in Google Scholar.

Together with WoS (Web of Science) and Scopus, Google Scholar Metrics is a reference for positioning investigators and journals in different areas of knowledge. Each of this databases offer indicators and metrics that contribute to the so desired visibility, with its lights and shadows. WoS and Scopus count with the traditional indexes more prestigious and known, with which have been valued the impact factors of journals through the recounting of cites (JCR, SJR). Curiously, GSM indexes more than the double of journals than SJR (Scopus) and ten times more than JCR (WoS). Nevertheless, it is convenient to consider that the filters both in WOS as in Scopus are more academic, that each of this databases count with several indexes that renovate with different periodicities and new products (ESCI in WoS and CiteScore in Scopus).

In the case of Google Scholar Metrics, are analyzed the journals and the scientific production of authors since the bibliometric index h, calculated since the number of received cites and the quantity of the scientific production of a researcher or from a journal, always applied to that database in its last five years (h5)=. However, the great problem of this database is that all indexation is automatic without filters and thus it occurs that are indexed in many occasions, wrong documents or false authors and it generates arguable valuations. Nevertheless, this powerful tool facilitates the search of well-known authors and its classification for the h and the ranking of journals for language, ordered for the h index.

GSM publishes annually the list of the best journals of all the files, according its h5 index. We already count with one of the 100 best journals in Spanish It is possible to make searches for getting the rankings, figuring out the h index of a journal looking for the tittle from GSM and visualizing the most cited articles from each journal by clicking on the h5 index. Similarly, the profile of each researcher permits to look its h index as well as its position in the ranking of its University or in its discipline or its themes of work.

You can increase this information in Ayllón, J.M.; Martín-Martín, A.; Orduña-Malea, E.; Delgado López-Cózar, E. (2016). H Index from the scientific Spanish Journals according to Google Scholar Metrics (2011-2015). EC3 Reports, 17. Granada, 27th July 2016.