License
Adapted under a CC-BY 4.0 license from the The 30-Day Impact Challenge: The Ultimate Guide to Raising the Profile of Your Research eBook published by Impactstory.org and authored by Stacy Konkiel, and the Duquesne University 5-Day Impact Challenge.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Resources for Measuring Impact
Tools
- Citation MetricsTraditional citation metrics include Article-Level Metrics, Journal-Level Metrics (JIFs), and Author-Level Metrics (h-index, g-index, eigenfactor, etc). Use this guide to find out more, including tools for assessing citation impact.
- AltmetricsAltmetrics are alternatives to traditional citation metrics. They can include Saves, Mentions, Annotation, Shares, Views, WorldCat holdings, Adaptations, Forks, Likes, Referring sites, Reviews or comments, and more.
They may be more useful for assessing the impact of work outside of journal articles. See this guide for tips and tools. - Metrics ToolkitResource for researchers and evaluators that provides guidance for demonstrating and evaluating claims of research impact.
- Google AlertsGet email notifications any time that Google finds new results on a topic you’re interested in.
- Google Scholar CitationsUse the Google Scholar Alerts to be notified of new citations to your work.
- Publish or PerishSoftware download that uses Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search to obtain citations and show: Total number of papers, total number of citations, average citations per paper, citations per author, papers per author, and citations per year; Hirsch's h-index and related parameters; Egghe's g-index; h-index; and more.
- ImpactStoryFree to use. "Impactstory is an open-source, web-based tool that helps scientists explore and share the diverse impacts of all their research products. By helping scientists tell data-driven stories about their impacts, we're helping to build a new scholarly reward system that values and encourages web-native scholarship. We’re funded by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation."
- Altmetric BookmarkletFree bookmarklet for Chrome, Firefox and Safari to view the online shares and mentions of an article with a single click.
- Scopus Author ProfileFree author lookup to search for any author and view citation data (specific to Scopus)
- KudosFree platform for explaining your research in plain language, and managing how you communicate around it – so you can understand how best to increase its impact.
Manual Methods
You can also search for citation and altmetrics data manually. Some examples are:
- Locate views and downloads directly on the publisher or repository website
- Look at star ratings and reviews on Amazon
- Search for references to your work in Google Books
- Identify how many libraries own your book using WorldCat