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Research Metrics Toolkit

“I'm applying for a grant, and I need to talk about my research impact. How do I find out if my publications have been cited by other Law scholars?”

Metrics for Law Researchers

As with many non-STEM disciplines, research excellence in Law is assessed based on peer review rather than purely citation analysis. 

Even compared with other disciplines in the social sciences or humanities, citation numbers in Law are generally low. 

Metrics information, therefore, tends to be developed into specific illustrations or narratives of research impact rather than "the numbers simply speaking for themselves".

You can find illustrative descriptions of highly-regarded and impactful Law research at the following links:

How to: Journal lists and rankings used by Law discipline

About discipline-based quality metrics/indicators:

  • HDR candidates: Consult with your supervisors to determine if any discipline-specific quality metrics or indicators are applicable to your intellectual contributions.
  • Researchers: Refer to the University Work Plan Policy, which includes the 2024 School Work Plan Policies, and review your individual work plans for guidance on your work plan profile research outputs/intellectual contributions and relevant outcomes.

School of Law journal ranking lists

ABDC Journal Quality List - Business and related disciplines 

  1. Access the most recent version of the Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality List from the ABDC website.
  2. Search for journals online, including by Field of Research and by Journal Rating.

Practical Challenges

Collecting citations and metrics for Law researchers faces several specific challenges:

  • Full-text indexing, essential to collecting citation data, varies significantly from database to database in Law (depending on publisher permissions), more so than in other disciplines.
  • Even where full-text indexing is available, legal articles often do not include a bibliography (and use only footnotes for citations). This makes it much more challenging to compile “cited by” totals.
  • Some legal databases reference journal articles without including the author’s name.

In most cases, therefore, accurate legal citation results require full-text manual searching by publication title, as well as manual searching by author name.

Source types (article, book, book chapter, etc.)

For information about research outputs relevant to your researcher profile, see Section 7: Research of your Individual Work Plan Policy for Western Sydney University School of Law (SoL). Note that Section 7.1.1 of the SoL Work Plan Policy states that publicly available research reports for an external body that meet all requirements of Section 4.4.9.6 of the ERA 2023 Submission Guidelines are considered eligible Non-Traditional-Research Outputs,

In other disciplines, different databases specialise in providing metrics data about different kinds of publications (e.g. journal articles, books, book chapters, etc.). However, obtaining metrics data in Law is a much more manual exercise (owing to the challenges summarised above). This means that the same approach - manual searching by title and author - is usually the best option, irrespective of what kind of source you are searching for.

The databases where you are likely to find references to your work (with advice about how to search them) are listed below. To search a database, use the Field in your Field of Research (FoR) code or from your research question to search the Title field in a database or to search by subject. Research publications should satisfy the ERA definition of research and should be in the Law 1801 FoR code, though this should not discourage interdisciplinary research or quality research in other FoR codes.

Ideally, before you start your research, use the Publishing Plan Toolkit to develop a publishing plan. Use the Toolkit to find a suitable quality publishing source, plan how you will promote your work, and track research performance. Contact your School Librarian for a copy of the Publishing Plan Form that you use to develop your plan. The Library will support and guide you throughout the publishing lifecycle.

Start your search strategy by using the following resources.

  • Review the Western Sydney Univerity School of Law Journal Ranking List available to School of Law authors and/or the ABDC Journal Quality List. Endeavour to publish in quality publishing houses and quality journals. If you don't find a suitable journal in these Lists, search the databases below, starting with Scopus Sources database.
  • Where an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal not listed in the WSU School of Law Journal Ranking List, the Research Committee will make a determination on 'points' based on factors including, but not limited to, journal citations, the journal impact factor (e.g., CiteScore or JIF), the journal's reputation, and the article's word length.
  • In the case of books and book chapters, the quality of publications is determined by reference to the reputation of publishing houses.
Record-keeping

Give careful thought to record-keeping, ideally before you start.

  • It can be advisable simply to use a spreadsheet or Word document.
  • Here is a suggested spreadsheet template [Excel download] for collecting Law citations.
Note:
  • When searching across databases, it can be difficult to identify duplicates.
  • Citation numbers are generally (very) low in the Law discipline.
  • For these reasons, it may be useful to include specific information about citing references (e.g. Title, Author, etc.) in your records.

Even if you have not used EndNote before, compiling an EndNote library of references that have cited your work can be an excellent resource. Using EndNote, you can:

  • export detailed citation data from many databases with a few clicks
  • easily identify duplicate references
  • see at a glance who is citing your work and in what context

Contact Us if you think EndNote could assist you and you are unsure where to start.

Explore citing references

Remember:

  • there are more ways to have an impact in Law than simply to be cited in academic works
  • in a field where citation numbers are low, and peer review is decisive, the context surrounding citing references can provide important evidence of impact

For example:

  • has your work been cited by esteemed authors (e.g. professors of international standing, textbook authors, judges) or in journals that have a high impact factor?
  • has your work, or an article that cited your work, been referred to in a judicial or administrative decision?
  • is your work listed in non-academic documents relied on by legal researchers and practitioners (e.g. CaseBase or FirstPoint case summaries)?
  • have you been cited by policy reports or textbooks?
Counting

As a Law researcher, you may have to explain your research impact to audiences or reviewers who are not from a legal background.

Hence, as you compile metric information, it may be helpful to consider how it might be framed numerically to impress a non-legal reader.

e.g. X publication has 10 citations in Google Scholar, 6 of these in journals with an A or A* ranking in the ABDC Journal Quality List (Australia's most authoritative journal ranking index for the Law discipline).

How to: Instructions for Law databases

Scopus
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Select Title, Abstract, Keywords.
    • If result is No documents were found, check whether there are secondary results, and if so Click here.
    • In Secondary Results, click Cited By.
    • This approach has resulted in more results than an initial search of All Fields.
Web of Science
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Basic Search
  3. Also perform a Cited Reference Search
  4. Also perform an Advanced Search in the form: TI=(”Title”)
ProQuest
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Use Advanced Search – Choose “Anywhere” or “Document text – FT*” for a full-text search. (Not “NOFT”)
SSRN
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Use the category Title, Abstract, Keywords & Full Text
Informit
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Use both “Simple Search” and “Advanced Search”
  3. To search all databases,
    • click on “Change Databases”
    • open “Select by Database” name
    • click on “Select All”
    • double-check that “AGIS Plus Text” is selected
  4. In Advanced Search, choose All Fields and Full Text.
Lexis Advance
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Choose Everything
Lexis Advance US
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Choose Everything
  3. Results as they first appear are limited to Cases and are likely to be 0. After searching, go to Select Category (top left) and select Secondary Sources.
Lexis Practical Guidance
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Choose Everything
LexisNexis Capital Monitor
  1. Select Advanced Search
  2. In Search For, search title in “”
  3. Select All for each of the five options (Media, Legislation, etc.)
Legaltrac
  1. Use Advanced Search
  2. Choose Entire Document
AustLII
  1. Search title in “”
  2. The default option is full-text search of all databases.
Westlaw Australia
  1. Search title in “”. Default Search is Free Text.
  2. For KeyCite reports, click to exclude case reports, etc. Include only the KeyCite report (which will include the citation).
Thomson Reuters Westlaw
  1. Search title in “”
  2. The default search is All Content.
  3. Check Secondary Sources in the menu on the left.
  4. Sometimes Westlaw does not show all results. Be sure to click Show all if available.
Westlaw UK
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Default Search is Document Free Text.
NB: If multiple sources are included for references in the results (e.g. transcripts of arguments, decisions, etc.), the highlighted results are those that contain the search terms. Non-highlighted documents do not contain the search results.
HeinOnline
  1. Search title in “”
  2. Choose Search All Databases.
Google Scholar
  1. Search title in “"

The h-index is the number of publications (h) that have been cited at least (h) times each. For example, a researcher with an h-index of 10 has at least 10 publications, each of which has been cited at least 10 times.

For Law researchers, the easiest way to find your h-Index is to create a Google Scholar author profile and include all of your publications.

  1. Go to Google Scholar
  2. Click on 'My Citations'
  3. Login to your personal Google account (or create one if you don't already have one). Google recommends you use a personal account (not your employers account) so you can keep your profile
  4. Complete the form (you need to include your university email address for inclusion in Google Scholar search results) and click 'Next Step'
  5. Google Scholar will provide you with a list of publications that it thinks belong to you. Click on 'See all Articles' to select individual articles. Scroll through the list and deselect any publications which are not yours. If any of your publications are missing, click 'Search articles' to perform a search in Google Scholar to add each of your remaining articles. Click Add to select articles
  6. Choose whether you want Google to automatically add new publications to your profile or whether you want to do so manually. Allowing Google to automatically add new publications can save you time, but it may erroneously add publications that aren't yours (especially if you have a common name). You also always have the option of manually searching for and adding publications to your profile
  7. Review your profile, upload a photo, and go to your university email to click on the verification link. Once you are satisfied with your profile, make it public, so it appears in Google Scholar search results
  8. Your h-Index will appear in the author details to the right of your profile.

Caution: Google Scholar

Citations tracked by Google Scholar are not controlled for quality in the same way as Scopus or Web of Science. Metrics from Google Scholar may appear higher and may include errors. However, it can provide better indexing of journal articles and citations in disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences than the traditional citation databases.

The Business Law Faculty publishes an agreed ranking of journal and book publisher quality, which contains journal rankings relevant to both the School of Business and the School of Law.

Specific journal rankings relevant to the Law discipline are also available at:

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Library guide created by Western Sydney University Library staff is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)