Guides: Research Impact: Promoting and Measuring: Measuring Research Impact

Reference Shelf

Becoming Metric-Wise by Ronald Rousseau; Leo Egghe; Raf Guns
Access Note: Concurrent User(s): 1

ISBN: 9780081024751

Publication Date: 2018-01-02

A Review of the Characteristics of 108 Author-level Bibliometric Indicators
Wildgaard L, Schneider JW, Larsen B. Scientometrics. 2014; 101(1):125-158.
doi:10.1007/s11192-014-1423-3
100 Metrics to Assess and Communicate the Value of Biomedical Research
Guthrie, Susan, Joachim Krapels, Catherine A. Lichten, and Steven Wooding.
Association of American Medical Colleges, 2016.

Meaningful Metrics by Robin Chin Roemer; Rachel Borchardt
Access Note: Z 669.8 M43 2015

ISBN: 9780838987551

Publication Date: 2015

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Also known as bibliometrics or informetrics, metrics (in this area) is the scientific study or statistical calculation of research output, such as books and articles.

Why Metrics are Important

Metrics, like citation count, can help to gauge the influence or impact of a researcher's article, or the body of work by an academic department or center.
Metrics like Journal Impact Factor can help to estimate a journal's influence or impact.
Metrics and visualizations can be used to identify research strengths and collaborations.
Applications for funding, promotion, or research positions may require a certain metric.

Caveats and Limitations

Citation counts can be misleading due to self-citations
A high citation count can include both positive and negative citations
Measures like the citation count and h-index score can vary between database/resources since they include different journals and years of coverage

General Resources for Finding Metrics

Journal Citation Reports
Find the most cited journals in a field, the highest impact journals in a field, the leading journals in a field and the most published articles in the sciences, technology and social sciences. Added functionality available with personal account.
Large Collection.
Updated quarterly.
2016-Present
Web of Science Core Collection
Includes Science, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities and Emerging Sources Citation Indexes. Also includes Journal Citation Reports, Grants Index, and Conference Proceedings. Added functionality available with personal account.
Large Collection
1970-Present
Updated Daily
Google Scholar
Multidisciplinary search tool specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Added functionality available with personal account.
Large Collection.
Updated Daily.
2004-Present

Eigenfactor
Eigenfactor.org® is an academic research project co-founded by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom and sponsored by the Bergstrom Lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. We aim to use recent advances in network analysis and information theory to develop novel methods for evaluating the influence of scholarly periodicals and for mapping the structure of academic research. We are committed to broadly disseminating our research findings and technological developments, while respecting the confidentiality of the data sources we use.
Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR)
The Scimago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains.
Dimensions
Provided by the company that includes Altmetric Explorer, this is a freely available database of publications (and more) that can also display basic level metrics and altmetrics for researchers and their publications.
The Lens
Free to use database of scholarly works, patents, and more; works pulled from Crossref, Microsoft Academic, ORCID. and other resources. Perform simple keyword searches or more-advanced structured searches with boolean operators and various limits.
scite
"scite uses deep learning to classify citation statements in three categories: those that provide disputing or supporting evidence, and others, which mention the cited study without providing evidence for its validity."
Publish or Perish
Publish or Perish is free software that can be downloaded and used to compile citation counts, Hirsch's h-index, and calculate other metrics.

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