What is Research Impact?

 Source: https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/research-impact

What is Research Impact?

“Impact” is a broad term that encompasses the reach and influence of a researcher’s work. There are several ways to communicate the value of your research. Measuring and conveying your research impact are crucial for improving research grant applications, supporting tenure application and promotions, and connecting with other researchers and project collaborators.

Some examples include:

• Who is citing your work?
• Has your work influenced other kinds of tangible outcomes? (e.g. development of new instruments, methods, or practice based on your research)
• Have news sources picked up your research and shared it with the masses?

Areas of Impact Measurement

Research Impact Tools

Many metrics and tools are available to help you analyze and share your research impact. 

• InCites This link opens in a new window

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  Institutional benchmarking, collaborations, citations, and more. See
  Clarivate Analytics Guide to InCites Benchmarking & Analytics: Learn the Basics for help with this tool.
• Journal Citation Reports (JCR) This link opens in a new window

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  Journal impact factors.
• Scopus This link opens in a new window

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  Journal impact factors, SNIP, citations, and more.
• Web of Science - All Databases This link opens in a new window

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  Citations, h-index, and more.

• Dimensions

  Search engine with citation data and a variety of metrics.

Visualization Tools

• Datawrapper

  Create interactive & responsive charts, maps, and graphs through this free web-based tool.
• Gephi

  Visualization and exploration software for all kind of graphs and networks.
• Tableau Public

  Interactive visualizations for developing your data story through graphs, charts, and maps.
• VOSviewer

  Ideal for analyzing bibliometric networks such as creating maps of publications, authors, or journals based on co-citation networks or keyword co-occurrence networks.