Bibliometric indicators for tenure and promotion
Updated 2026-08-06
Preparing a tenure or promotion file is largely an exercise in documenting precisely what you have already done. Its quality depends less on rhetoric than on having every indicator located, dated and backed by a source the reviewer can check.
This guide lists the indicators usually requested, how to document them, and the oversights that most often send a file back for revision.
Calculate your h-index
Enter your ORCID (OpenAlex) or paste citation counts per work. No account. The full bibliometric report — quartiles, trends, networks — lives in the signed-in module.
The indicators almost always requested
The core is similar across systems: number of publications in the period under review, journal standing (quartile or tercile within its category), citations received, aggregate indices such as h and i10, and evidence of leadership on each work.
Add to that international co-authorship, doctoral supervision, competitive grants and knowledge transfer. Their weight varies by field, but locate all of them before you start writing.
Pick a source and record it
Every indicator needs its source and retrieval date. An h-index without a source is unusable for a reviewer, because it cannot be reproduced.
If the call requires a specific database, use it. If not, use a reproducible source and stay consistent: do not mix Google Scholar citations with quartiles from another database without saying so, or the figures stop being comparable.
Document leadership, not just the byline
On multi-author work, committees look for evidence of your own contribution: first authorship, corresponding authorship, supervision of the student who signs first, or the paper's contribution statement.
Collect that evidence while you build the file, not afterwards. Recovering who was corresponding author on a five-year-old paper takes longer than you would expect.
Reading the co-authorship network
Collaboration structure says things a publication count cannot: whether your output depends on a single group, whether you have opened your own lines, and whether you collaborate steadily with foreign institutions.
Presenting that network explicitly, with institutions and countries, supports a claim of scientific independence far better than a flat publication list.
Frequent mistakes that cost points
Profiles fragmented across signature variants, so half the citations go missing. Figures without a retrieval date. Quartiles from the wrong year when the publication year is what counts. Lists that do not separate journal articles from proceedings or chapters.
Nearly all of these surface when you review the complete profile in one pass, before splitting it into form fields.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I report the current quartile or the one from the publication year?
- The publication year is the usual criterion, since it reflects the journal's standing when the work appeared. Always state which year the quartile refers to.
- Do preprints count?
- They usually count as dissemination rather than as reviewable publications, unless the call says otherwise. Keep them separate from peer-reviewed articles.
- How do I justify citations if my profile is fragmented?
- Consolidate the profile first, merging your signature variants, and document the merge. A report explaining which variants were unified is more credible than a bare number.