How Can You Measure the Impact of Your Research?
Citations to publications are the most common indicators of impact.
Citation counts calculate how often an article was cited in other scholarly works. These counts are collected at the level of an individual publication (article-level indicators) and can be “rolled up” to include all publications by an individual author, research group, institution or country.
H-Index is an example of an indicator derived from calculating citation counts to a group of publications (traditionally, of an individual author, but also research groups or entire institutions).
The impact of journal titles can also be measured by indicators constructed using aggregate citation counts to groups of publications (Clarivate Analytics’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) or Scopus’s CiteScore are examples).
Alternative metrics or “altmetrics” have potential to show the impact of a broader range of research output.
Indicators based on measuring and benchmarking usage of scholarly content outside journal articles are known collectively as alternative metrics or altmetrics. These metrics have potential to show impact of a broader range of research outputs and impact outside the research community.
Metric Tracking Databases
- Google Scholar - Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Connect Google Scholar and Clarkson University