Alexa Hight
Guidelines for Responsible Use of Research Metrics
What is Research Impact?
Research impact aims to describe the reach and influence of a body of work.
It can be used by individuals or groups to:
- Strengthen a case for promotion or tenure
- Demonstrate how grant dollars have impacted academia and society
- Bolster grant applications
- Identify who is citing a body of work
- Find collaborators
This guide covers some of the more populars measures of author, journal, and article impact. Many of these metrics are proprietary to specific companies.
Best Practices for using research metrics:
- Metrics are not a substitute for informed, qualitative assessment.
- Metrics should be easy to understand, transparent, and open.
- Different contexts and disciplines may require different sets of metrics.
- The people being evaluated should have the opportunity to verify the data.
For more information on guidelines and ethics, see the reports listed below:
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DORAThe Declaration on Research Assessment provides best practices for research assessment.
Intended audiences include funding agencies, institutions, publishers, researchers, and organizations that supply metrics. -
Leiden ManifestoOutlines ten principles for research evaluation
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SCOPE Framework for Research EvaluationA Five Stage, broad framework for responsible research evaluations:
S: START with what you value
C: CONTEXT considerations
O: OPTIONS for evaluating
P: PROBE deeply
E: EVALUATE your evaluation
About Journal Impact Factors
Quantitative analysis of journals is a way traditional peer review may be augmented to gain a more complete picture of a scholar's impact in his chosen field. Three measures can be used:
- The number of publications
- The number of times an author's publications have been cited
- The importance of the journal where the article is published, or the Journal Ranking
Publishing traditions vary between disciplines. Because of this, it is important to compare journals within the same or similar disciplines as much as possible. This will not always be easy as more research becomes interdisciplinary but in order for these journal ranking systems to have meaning the factors measured must compare journals in similar disciplines or subject areas.
Legitimacy of Journal Rankings
Just as you may be aware of predatory journals, seeking to make money from academics eager to be published, fake impact factor sites have appeared on the web. When trying to determine where to publish try as much as possible to use well-known journal ranking resources.
A word about tenure and promotion
What "impact" do metrics have on promotion and tenure?
Those are decisions made by each department or college on campus. The best thing to do is to consult with the department chair or colleagues to learn what is useful in your discipline. You'll need a selection of tools and the set will vary by discipline.
Quick ways to get started tracking your impact
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Sign up for an ORCID IdentifierThe unique number assigned to you will allow publishers and aggregators of scholarly literature to distinguish you from researchers with similar names.
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Get a ResearcherID with Web of ScienceA ResearcherID can be linked to your ORCID number and facilitates citation metrics and publication tracking using Web of Science tools.
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Loop up your Scopus Author IDA Scopus Author ID can be linked to your ORCID number and facilitates citation metrics and publication tracking using Scopus tools.
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Create a Google Scholar Citations ProfileGoogle scholar citations allows authors to track citations to their scholarly works and to calculate numerous citation metrics based on Google Scholar citation data.