GEOG 641: Research Design

Directions: On your own or in pairs, skim the article "Using GIS-based spatial analysis to determine urban greenspace accessibility for different racial groups in the backdrop of COVID-19: A case study of four US cities" and answer the following questions for your assigned group number. 

Group 1: 

• What are the research questions and/or objectives? 
• Which references in the literature review do you think are most important?  

Group 2: 

• What methods are used in this article?
• What are some of the study's limitations? 

Group 3: 

• What is one of the study's key findings? 
• How many times has this article been cited in Google Scholar?

One way authors can measure research impact is through the h-index.  This metric combines measures of productivity with measures of impact and is designed to reflect research quality over time.  It is defined as follows: "a researcher has an h-index if they have at least h publications for which they have received at least h citations."  For example, if a researcher has an h-index of 12, they have 12 publications that have received at least 12 citations over time.  Authors can find their h-index via Web of Science or Google Scholar. 

Web of Science

On the main page of the Web of Science database, select the Reseachers tab.  Enter the first and last name of the researcher.  You may also search by affiliated organizations or by researcher ID (e.g., ORCID ID, Web of Science ResearcherID).

On the right side of the author's profile page, you will find the Metrics information, which contains the author's H-index.

Google Scholar

Researchers can also use Google Scholar to locate their author H-index.  You can search for individual author pages by using the Profiles search box:

Each researcher profile will contain a list of citations and links to each article, as well as a list of co-authors, in addition to author metrics, including the author H-index.

The journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal helps you determine the importance of a journal within its field. 

This number is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years.

For example, the journal impact factor of Analytical Chemistry is 8.008. This means, on average, articles published by this journal in the last two years have been cited 8 times. 

You can find a journal's impact factor and compare impact factors across journals in your field in Web of Science's Journal Citation Reports.

JIF is proprietary and there is a lack of transparency in how it is calculated by Web of Science. It has also been criticized for being skewed by a few high impact articles, only counting the most recent two years of citations, its broad definition of "citable items," and disciplinary differences (Larivière & Sugimoto, 2018).