Traditional Publication Metrics
It is important to track your research after publication to measure the impact it has on the scientific or scholarly community. Traditional metrics to measure the impact of research include citation analysis, journal impact factor, and h-index.
Citation Analysis
The most common indicator of research impact is publication citations. Citation analysis is the process where the impact of an article is determined by counting the number of times other authors have cited it in their work. This type of analysis may not be useful for measuring the impact of more recent publications because it can take years for some works to acquire citations.
You can find the number of times a work has been cited in scholarly publications by analyzing citations in resources such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and CINAHL Complete. A benefit of using these tools is they are readily available to most researchers. However, they only provide basic options compared to more advanced citation analysis tools such as Scopus and Web of Science.
*Schedule a consultation with your librarian who can verify data through Scopus and Web of Science.
Journal Impact Factors & Ranks
Analyzing journal impact factors and ranks early in the scholarly communication lifecycle is beneficial for identifying journals for publication. It may also be helpful to gather this data post-publication to provide impact factors for the year in which your paper was published. This type of data may be useful for demonstrating your research impact when reporting to organizations and grant funders. Some of the tools you can use to find this information include Journal Citation Reports, SCImago Journal & Country Rank, and Eigenfactor.
*Impact factors are not always the best indicator of a journal's quality or relevance. What constitutes a high score varies between disciplines.
Author H-Index
An author’s h-index, also referred to as the Hirsch Index or Hirsch number, is another way to measure the impact of research publications. While the h-index is considered a valuable metric, it is not considered a universal metric because it is difficult to compare researchers from different disciplines or at different stages in their careers. The score is based on the set of a researcher’s most cited papers and the number of citations they have received in other author's publications. Find your h-index using resources such as Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.
Alternative Publication Metrics
Alternative publication metrics, also known as "altmetrics," represent data beyond traditional metrics. They are intended to complement traditional metrics, not replace them.
Altmetrics include measures such as the number of bookmarks on resources like Mendeley, discussions on scholarly blogs, Twitter and Facebook shares, video views, and pageviews/downloads. This type of data starts collecting as soon as your work is published.
Watch the video to learn more about what "altmetrics" are and how they can help you discover and understand the diverse impacts of research.
Altmetrics Tools
Almetrics are available from many different platforms and resources including journal websites, social media platforms, and scholarly repositories. There are different tools researchers can use to track this data including Plum Analytics, Altmetric.com, and Impactstory.
Plum Analytics
Plum Analytics is a subscription-based platform authors can use to build profiles to track traditional metrics and altmetrics for publications and other works. PlumX Metrics (also known as the “Plum Print”) are divided into the following categories: citations, usage, captures, mentions, and social media.
Altmetric.com
Altmetric.com is a subscription-based tool that tracks author engagement and influence across different platforms. Altmetric widgets appear on many publisher websites and research databases.
Impactstory
Impactstory is the “Google Scholar for your research's online reach.” It is a free aggregator tool authors can use to track traditional and altmetrics for publications and other works.