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Research Impact and Author Profiles

A guide to bibliometrics, altmetrics, and citation/journal analysis.

Definitions

Bibliometrics
“The quantitative measures used to assess research output i.e. publication and citation data analysis” (MyRI).

Citation Impact
The impact of a particular work may be assessed by the number of times it is cited by other works and alternative metrics such as downloads and social media buzz.

Researcher Impact
A researcher's publication impact is often assessed by the number of works they publish and the number of times their works are cited.

Journal Impact
Academic journals are assessed by the number of times their articles are cited and where they are cited. 

 

 

Why is this important?

  • Promotion and tenure reviews
  • Grant applications
  • Benchmark performance
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses
  • Demonstrate return on investment

Caveats and Cautions

Bibliometrics and altmetrics are important, but controversial.  DORA (the Declaration of Research Assessment) is both a petition and declaration which recognizes the need to improve the way research is assessed using bibliometrics, pointing out the flaws in relying on journal metrics. 

Evaluators need to be aware of the tools and their scope, use multiple tools and approaches, and be tranparent when calculating results.


Get Help

Contact us to schedule a consultation appointment.

We can teach you how to track citations to your work, how to measure your personal research impact, and how to set up unique researcher IDs.

Research and Learning Office
A.R. Dykes Health Sciences Library
(913) 945-5990
dykesresearch@kumc.edu

Attribution (LibGuides Collaboration)

The authors would like to thank Emory University Libraries, the University of Oxford-Radcliffe Science Library, University of Maryland Libraries, Harvard University Library, and Cornell University Library for allowing us to adapt material from their libguides.