HeinOnline’s Scholarly Impact Rankings: Another Set of League Tables Based on Citation Counts?
— by Eddie Ko
HeinOnline released its Scholarly Impact Rankings (SIR) in late January 2026. HKU staff and students can access SIR via HeinOnline > Law Journal Library database. The steps for access are illustrated in the figure below:
An open-access version SIR is also available. While both versions provide the same data, the subscriber version allows CSV downloads for offline analysis and direct links to related articles, journals, and author profiles within HeinOnline.
The ABA-Approved Law Schools Rankings in SIR are limited to authors and institutions affiliated with ABA-accredited U.S. law schools. By contrast, the Comprehensive Rankings, which draw from all journals indexed in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library, are more relevant for non-U.S. law schools, including institutions in Hong Kong.
The rankings and methodologies are explained in HeinOnline’s official guide. In this post, I focus instead on my own assessment of this initiative. Overall, I find SIR somewhat disappointing in the following respects.
Limited Scope of Scholarly Impact Measurement
In its launch statement, HeinOnline asserts that:
Unlike traditional rankings that focus narrowly on select publications or citation counts, Scholarly Impact Rankings reflect the full scope of legal scholarship, including the work of practitioners, judges, and policy experts whose contributions shape legal discourse.
Despite this claim, SIR remains overwhelmingly dependent on citation-based metrics. The majority of its weighting is derived from citation counts drawn exclusively from a single source—the HeinOnline Law Journal Library—while the remaining component is based on article access statistics generated by HeinOnline users over the past 12-month. In other words, SIR relies entirely on the data within its own ecosystem, rather than reflecting the “full scope of legal scholarship” it purports to measure.
This platform‑centred methodology also excludes substantial categories of scholarly output and impact. Books, book chapters, edited volumes, and conference papers, which remain significant publication formats for many legal scholars, are not incorporated. Nor does SIR capture other dimensions of scholarly influence that are central to the legal academy, such as impact on courts, legislatures, regulatory bodies and legal education. By overlooking these forms of contribution, SIR presents only a partial and incomplete view of scholarly impact.
Monthly Updates Without Historical Trend Data
HeinOnline promotes SIR as a tool to “[i]dentify trends in legal research and publishing”. In practice, however, SIR is updated monthly without providing convenient access to historical data, unless users manually archive monthly CSV files (which, fortunately, I have done).
When I enquired about access to prior monthly data, HeinOnline responded:
At this time, there is not a way to retrieve a prior monthly snapshot of the Scholarly Impact Rankings data. The database reflects the most current monthly update available, and previous versions are not archived for separate access.
By contrast, other research-evaluation tools – such as SciVal, InCites, and Journal Citation Reports – typically provide access to historical data. At the time of writing, SIR also does not offer an API, which further limits its usefulness for systematic or large‑scale analysis.
Stars from HKU Law listed in the SIR Top 100
For readers who are curious, two professors from HKU Law appear in the SIR Top 100 rankings (data current as of February 2026):
| Professor | Comprehensive Rankings | Jan 2026 | Feb 2026 |
| Arner, Douglas | Most-Recently Accessed Authors (Past 12 months) | #30 | #28 |
| Most-Cited Authors: Economics and Taxation | #27 | #25 | |
| Most-Cited Authors: Law, Science, and Technology | #18 | #18 | |
| Sun, Haochen | Most-Cited Authors: Law, Science, and Technology | #70 | #70 |
Conclusion
Overall, SIR offers a limited view of scholarly impact that relies primarily on citation-based metrics and provides minimal support for historical trend analysis. While SIR may serve as a reference for assessing scholarly influence within HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library, users should supplement SIR with additional metrics and data sources when evaluating broader research influence.
Declaration of Generative AI use
I acknowledge the use of Generative AI tools in writing this post. I used:
- Copilot to refine the language.
I declare that I reviewed and edited the contents as needed, and take full responsibility for the content of the post; And the information provided is complete and accurate.
