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No single metric, and especially the universally applicable h-index, is suitable for comprehensive evaluation of an individual's research impact. |
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Individual profiles at several, including national and specialist bibliographic databases should be analyzed to comprehensively evaluate global and local components of an individual's research productivity. |
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Various published works reflect priorities of research productivity across academic disciplines (e.g., conference papers in physics, journal articles in medicine, monographs in humanities). |
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A mere number of researcher publications, citations, and related metrics should not be viewed as a proxy of the quality of their scholarly activities. |
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No any thresholds of number of publications, citations, and related metrics can be employed for distinguishing productive researchers from non-productive peers. Any such threshold (e.g., 50 articles) is arbitrary. |
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Optimal metrics for research evaluation should be simple, intuitive, and easily understandable for non-experts. |
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Quantitative indicators should complement, but not substitute, expert evaluation. |
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All author-level metrics are confounded by academic discipline, geography, (multi)authorship, time window, and age of researchers. |
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Productivity of early career researchers with a few publications and seasoned authors with established academic career and a large number of scholarly works should be evaluated separately. |
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Comprehensive research evaluation implies understanding of the context of all traditional and alternative metrics. When manipulation of publication and citation counts is suspected, the evaluation should preferably source information from higher-rank periodicals. |
