HeinOnline’s Scholarly Impact Rankings provide monthly updates identifying the most influential legal scholars, journals, and institutions. Developed using HeinOnline’s own ranking methodology, these metrics reflect a comprehensive analysis of citation patterns across the entire corpus of journal content within HeinOnline. Below are some frequently asked questions.
What’s the difference between the ABA-Approved Law School Ranking and the Comprehensive Ranking?
HeinOnline offers two perspectives on scholarly impact:
- ABA Ranking: Limited to law schools recognized by the ABA.
- Comprehensive Ranking: Expands beyond the ABA list to include a wider pool of authors and institutions.
Both rankings provide valuable insight, but each addresses a different viewpoint on scholarly impact.
How were the subjects decided upon?
The subjects used in the rankings were chosen to reflect both faculty expertise and researcher demand. Specifically, they are drawn from two sources:
- ABA faculty interests: Current areas of teaching and scholarship emphasized by ABA-approved law school faculty.
- HeinOnline PathFinder subjects: The most frequently used subjects and categories within HeinOnline’s PathFinder tool, which highlights how researchers are engaging with the content.
This approach ensures that the subjects represented are both academically relevant and practically useful to the legal research community.
Are deceased authors included in the rankings?
Deceased authors are included in the Comprehensive rankings, but they are not included in the ABA-Approved Law Schools rankings. The ABA-Approved Law Schools rankings include only current and active faculty.
Are adjunct, retired, or emeritus professors included in the rankings?
Adjunct and other non-tenure faculty may qualify for inclusion in our rankings. At this time, we also continue to include retired and emeritus professors.
Similar to our treatment of deceased authors, these faculty members are included in the Comprehensive rankings. However, because they are current and/or active faculty—or, in the case of retired/emeritus professors, may still hold influence or contacts—they are also included in the ABA-Approved Law Schools rankings.
Why are the numbers different between the two rankings?
The metrics themselves (citations, h-index, etc.) are the same across both versions. However, the pool of schools and authors being compared differs:
- In the ABA-Approved Law Schools rankings, authors are measured only against other ABA-recognized institutions.
- In the Comprehensive rankings, the comparison pool is broader.
As a result, an author’s raw metrics may remain identical, but their rank position can shift depending on the group being measured.
Are case citations included in the rankings?
Case citation metrics are not part of the revised methodology at this time. While they can provide useful insights, they represent only a small slice of scholarly impact. For now, the approach emphasizes broader, more widely accepted measures such as the h-index and h5-index, with case citation metrics under consideration for possible inclusion in future updates.
How often do the metrics change?
Each list includes the top 100 entries and is refreshed with every monthly HeinOnline content release, at which point all citations are fully recounted. This ensures that rankings remain up to date as new scholarship is published and cited.
How does HeinOnline run quality control on author information and affiliations?
Maintaining accurate author affiliations is a priority for ensuring the integrity of the rankings. Quality control is handled in three ways:
- Ongoing updates: Librarians frequently notify our support team of changes, and our staff updates author affiliations in HeinOnline accordingly.
- Annual review: Each summer, HeinOnline’s quality control team performs a systematic review to confirm that all author affiliations are still accurate and up to date.
- Author input: Authors can update their own information by contacting HeinOnline support directly or by editing their Author Profile in HeinOnline.
This combination of librarian input, scheduled review, and author-driven updates helps ensure the data is reliable and reflects where authors are actively teaching and publishing. Scheduled review helps keep the data reliable and reflective of where authors are actively teaching and publishing.
What’s the difference between the h-index and the h5-index?
Both metrics measure scholarly impact by balancing productivity (number of articles published) with influence (number of times those articles are cited). The key difference is the time frame:
- h-index: Looks at the author’s entire body of work. It reflects how many articles have each been cited at least h times, across all years of publication.
- h5-index: Focuses only on the past five years. It counts how many articles an author has published in that window that have each been cited at least h times.
In short, the h-index captures lifetime impact, while the h5-index highlights an author’s recent scholarly activity and influence.
Why doesn’t an author’s subject metrics match their Author Profile page?
The difference comes down to the scope of coverage:
- Subject listings: Metrics shown here reflect only the subset of an author’s articles that fall under a specific subject (e.g., Constitutional Law).
- Author Profile page: Metrics on this page represent the author’s entire body of work in HeinOnline, across all subjects.
Because subject metrics are calculated from a smaller pool of articles, they will not match the totals shown on the Author Profile page.