Research Impact

Metrics are important. They measure our influence in our communities; they are used to evaluate the performance of ourselves, our departments, and our peers. Therefore, ensuring that we collect relevant measures and contextualize them appropriately is important.

Citation-based metrics have been the traditional benchmarks for success in academia. The most familiar citation-based metrics include the Journal Impact Factor and the Hirsch Index, although there are many other citation-based measures that can provide insights to the value of published works and assit with academic benchmarking.

Increasingly, though, research impact has become greater than citation-based metrics alone. We are seeing that traditional metrics give incomplete picture of impact, missing newer forms of use such as page views and download counts, mentions and saves. Article-level metrics are stepping up to fill in these gaps, and they are becoming more and more mainstream.

The folks at ImpactStory have compiled a 2-part primer on services that deliver essential research impact metrics straight to your inbox to help you stay up to date.

These blog posts present ideas for including research impact metrics on your biosketch and in grant proposals.