Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Increasing the Visibility and Impact of Your Research

 Source: https://libguides.wvu.edu/c.php?g=958684&p=6921429

Increasing the Visibility and Impact of Your Research

Scholarly Impact Metrics

Scholarly impact metrics provide evidence of impact for scholarly work. While impact metrics are not without critics, familiarizing yourself with them can provide you with some information regarding the extent to which your work is making an impact in your field or beyond. By examining the data that these metrics provide, you can evaluate whether you current publishing strategy is effective or whether you should consider alternative venues for disseminating your work. 

Impact metrics can also be beneficial when it comes time to write a scholarly impact narrative for tenure, promotion, or other evaluative processes. By referencing specific metrics, you can justify your narrative by providing both qualitative and quantitative indicators of impact. 

Types of Metrics

Scholarly impact metrics can be used to evaluate impact at three different levels.

  • Article-level metrics indicate the impact of a single publication, such as a journal article. They include number of times the article was cited as well as download and other usage statistics.
  • Author-level metrics indicate the impact of an individual author throughout their career. The h-index is one of the most well-known author-level metrics.
  • Journal-level metrics indicate the impact of a journal as a whole. The Journal Impact Factor is the most well-known journal-level metric.

In addition to these three levels, we can also differentiate between traditional metrics and altmetrics (i.e. alternative metrics). Traditional metrics include citation counts, the h-index, and journal impact factor. While traditional metrics are typically used to measure the impact of research within the scholarly community, altmetrics provide insight into a work's societal impact. They often reflect online discussions of research, such as Wikipedia citations, social media mentions, media coverage, or references in public policy documents.

Tracking Your Metrics

Suggested Metrics for Different Types of Works

Different databases and other sources of scholars metrics have different strengths depending the scholarly literature and disciplines indexed within those sources. For example, Scopus and Web of Science have better coverage for the social sciences than for the arts and humanities. The tables below suggest sources for scholarly metrics for different types of scholarly objects. 

Scholarly Object: Journal Articles

Metric Data Source
Mentions Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, or Twitter
Article usage

Number of times accessed, viewed, or downloaded: Open access repositories, journal websites
Article level impact: Number of citations

Scopus: citations aggregated from articles published in and cited by journals indexed in Scopus

Web of Science: citations aggregated from articles published in and cited by journals indexed in Web of Science

Google Scholar: citations aggregated by web crawling of online peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content
Author-level impact: h-index Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The h-values calculated by the different sources are not equivalent as they are based on different collections of journals.
Journal-level impact

Journal impact factor: Incites Journal Citation Reports 

Scimago Journal Rank (SJR): Scimago Journal & Country Rank 

Other journal information: Ulrichsweb, The Serials Directory

Scholarly Object: Books

Metric Data Source
Mentions Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, or Twitter
Book usage

Number of times accessed, viewed, or downloaded: Open access repositories, publisher websites

Sales: Publisher websites, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble websites

Library ownership: OCLC Worldcat Database
Number of citations

Scopus: citations aggregated from books indexed in Scopus

Web of Science: citations aggregated from books indexed in Web of Science

Google Scholar: citations aggregated by web crawling of online peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content

Various databases: Citations manually counted through full text search. Appropriate databases may include JSTOR, ProQuest, Oxford Scholarship Online
Book-level impact:

Cited/Included in Syllabi/Libguides/Bibliographies: Advanced Google search, search through Libguides (library resources created by librarians).

Reviews or awards: Advanced Google search, library book reviews databases, Google Scholar.
Quality of Press Peer review

Scholarly Object: Creative Works

Metric Data Source
Mentions Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, or Twitter
Create Work Usage

Number of performances or exhibits

Number of times recordings accessed, view, or downloaded: open access repositories, publisher websites

Library ownership of creative work: OCLC Worldcat Database
Create Work Impact

Cited/Included in Syllabi/Libguides/Bibliographies:  Advanced Google search, search through Libguides (library resources created by librarians).

Reviews and awards: Advanced Google Search, Nexis Uni, Newspaper Source

Scholarly Object: Non-peer-reviewed works shared via the Research Repository @ WVU or other repositories

Metric Data Source
Mentions Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. (PlumX tracks this in the Research Repository @ WVU)
Usage Number of times accessed, viewed, or downloaded (tracked via Research Repository author dashboard)
Number of Citations

Research Repository: Citations from PlumX that derives citations from Scopus.

Google Scholar: citaitons aggregated by web crawling of online peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content. 

This information was based on Herbert, Bruce; Potvin, Sarah; Budzise-Weaver, Tina (2016). Best Practices for the Use of Scholarly Impact Metrics. Available electronically from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/156054. 

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