Citation and h-index averages for law academics – Comparing apples with apples

By Professor Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Have you ever wondered whether you are a “good” law academic? If so, what criteria did you use in your self-assessment? The reality is, of course, that any such assessment is both difficult and subjective. 

Despite the unavoidable difficulties and subjectivities, we are frequently compared to other academics. This happens, for example, when applying for promotion, grants, or awards and prizes. It also happens in the annual appraisals that now are a standard feature of academic life, and perhaps it happens informally from time to time. 

As far as research ability is concerned, two of the factors that frequently are considered on any such occasions of comparison are how many times have your works been cited, and what is your so-called “h-index score”. The h-index score h is equal to the number of papers (h) that have been cited at least h times. 

In other words, if you have published 10 papers that each are cited at least 10 times, your h-index score is 10 (assuming that your 11^th most cited paper is cited less than 11 times). This way, the h-index is, in a sense, an indicator of “impact” across multiple publications.   

On some occasions, we as law academics are compared to academics from other disciplines. Where that happens, the impacts of discipline-specific behaviours are showcased, often resulting in law academics coming across as unproductive and lacking in impact compared to our colleagues in other sciences such as medicine. 

While our colleagues in health sciences frequently publish in large writing consortia with 50+ authors (all happily claiming to be authors in the same sense as if they were the sole author), law academics predominantly write as individuals. It goes without saying that the workload on each member of a 50+ author writing consortia is lower than on a sole author, thus making possible a higher output of papers.

Furthermore, the extent to which we cite other academic sources varies across disciplines. Law academics often have multiple other – non-academic – sources such as legislation and cases take up the bulk of the references resulting in comparatively fewer citations of academic works in each paper. This puts law academics at a further disadvantage in a comparison with scholars from some other fields.  

The result is obvious. Law academics may appear unproductive and lacking in impact compared to our colleagues in other sciences since we are comparing apples and oranges. 

One way to remedy this flaw is to identify the average citation count and h-index score for law academics. This was done in a study by the London School of Economics revealing the average h-index for law to be as low as 1.25. However, that study, published in 2011, is now severely dated.        

To get a new – up to date – ‘ball-park figure’ of what the current averages might be for law academics, I have – with the great aid of Hoda Asgarian – examined data for all Queensland law academic in relation to which data was available via Google Scholar. Care was taken to exclude staff classed as honorary, adjunct, or sessional. Had such staff members been included, the average citations and h-index would likely have been lower.

Like any dataset in this context, the dataset of the Google Scholar Profiles is doubtlessly incomplete. However, it is nevertheless likely one of the most complete datasets of its kind and one relied upon by other reputable studies such as the annual study published by League of Scholars together with The Australian.  

The relevant law schools/faculties in focus were identified via the website of the Council of Australian Law Deans.  Thus, for Queensland I looked at:

• Bond University (Faculty of Law); 
• CQUniversity Australia (School of Business and Law); 
• Griffith University (Griffith Law School); 
• James Cook University (School of Law);
• Queensland University of Technology (QUT) (School of Law);
• The University of Queensland (TC Beirne School of Law);  
• University of Southern Queensland (School of Law and Justice) ;
• University of the Sunshine Coast (School of Law and Society) ; and 
• Australian Catholic University (Thomas More Law School).

For those universities that have multiple campuses, I only took account of staff based at their Queensland campuses. Furthermore, great care was taken to ensure that focus was placed only on law academics even where they are part of schools or faculties covering multiple disciplines. 

In one case, the website staff list only included research active staff (staff with a research profile), while the other law academics were not included. To make the statistics for that law school comparable with that of the other law schools, a staff directory was used to identify all other law academic staff members who were not listed as honorary, adjuncts or hired on a semester basis.   

In the study carried out September-October 2024, a total of 268 Queensland law academics were identified, with 64 of them (or 23.9%) being full professors. Of the total number of academics identified (268), 133 (or 49.6%) had Google Scholar Profiles from which we could extract data. The corresponding figure for full professors was 38 (or 59.4%). Thus, the accuracy of the method used is limited by the fact that not all relevant academics have a Google Scholar Profile. 

In some cases, searches for the law academic in question simply did not generate any result. In other cases, the law academic was found via Google Scholar but did not have a public profile. The extent to which this occurred varied greatly between different universities. At the university with the highest uptake of Google Scholar 81.1% of the staff in total and 80 % of the full professors had a public Google Scholar profile.

At any rate, there can be many reasons a scholar chose not to have a public profile on Google Scholar. However, in those cases where no results were found, it may be suspected that the academic in question simply has not published anything that Google Scholar has recorded, and in such cases, both the citation number and the h-index score is likely very low. Perhaps one may also speculate that amongst those academics whose publications show up, but who have chosen not to have a public profile, a non-negligible number have opted for this approach due to their citation count and/or h-index not being as flattering as they may have wanted. 

Taking account of the above, it is reasonable to assume that, had all law academics had a public profile on Google Scholar, and thus been included in the study, the averages would have been considerably lower than the averages presented below. 

Nevertheless, the method is solid enough to provide the type of ‘ball-park figure’ we were aiming for; not least since the lack of profiles may be equally an issue if academics from another field were subject to the same type of study. Furthermore, while there may no doubt be differences between the different Australian states and territories, the figures from Queensland are at least indicative of what may be the national average. Indeed, it may well be the case that the results of this study may have some international validity at least in relation to countries with a similar academic culture. 

So, what is the result? Well, under the study we carried out, as described above, the average number of total citations for Queensland law academics is 510.3, and the average h-index score is 8.9. The corresponding numbers for full professors were an average number of total citations of 1,212.8, and an average h-index score of 15.3. 

Given the type of data set, it may also be worthwhile to consider the median. The median number of total citations for Queensland law academics is 234, and the media h-index score is 7. The corresponding numbers for full professors were a median number of total citations of 916, and a median h-index score of 14.

This table provides a summary:

To all the law academics out there, I hope that these figures can be of assistance next time your important research is evaluated by reference to the poor proxy that is your number of total citations and/or your h-index score, and compared with that of your colleagues in other disciplines.