Tools and Methods for Demonstrating Research Influence
Tools for Measuring Researcher Impact
- Citation Map by Thomson Reuters [the company that owns Web of Science] — The citation mapping tool tracks an article’s cited and citing references through two generations, allowing researchers to visually discover an article’s wider relationships
- Citation Reports by Thomson Reuters [the company that owns Web of Science] — Citation reports give an analysis of citation data
- Citation Tracker by Elsevier [the company that owns Scopus] — Citation tracker is a way to find, check and track citation data. It lets you track data year by year for a specific author or topic
- H-Index — An independent tool created by a scholar and used in both Web of Science and Scopus. A scientist has index h if h of his or her Np papers have at least h citations each and the other (Np h) papers have h citations each
- H-Graph — A tool in Scopus that will display groups of h-index scores by author, multiple authors, or documents. Use the help link above to create an h-Graph while in Scopus. The h-Graph measures the impact of a set of articles and shows the number of citations per document
How to Demonstrate Impact
Increasingly researchers are being asked to demonstrate their research impact when applying for grant applications or promotions.
- Citation reports are one method for creating a profile of your research activities
- The h-index is a single quantitative measure that looks at productivity and citation-based impact simultaneously
- Esteem measures can also be included to demonstrate impact or influence within your field
Measure Esteem
The following factors may provide additional evidence of research quality and/or research capacity. These measures may be considered in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative and may be relevant for competitive grant applications and academic promotions:
- Conference publications
- International engagement
- Influence on industry/government/public policy/community/cultural organisations
- Successfully acquitted research grants
- Successfully acquitted research projects
- Awards and prizes
- Holdings in libraries
- Partnerships
- Editorships
- Research fellowships
- Membership of Learned Academy
- Membership of Statutory Committee
- Patents
- Registered designs
- Plant breeders rights
- NHMRC and ARC endorsed guidelines
- Research commercialisation income
Publish in Open Access Publications
Open Access publishers allow free, unrestricted and online access to their publications. Open Access has many advantages - for the researcher it provides increased visibility of their publications. For more information about open access publishers and publications:
- DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals — All scientific and scholarly subjects are covered. For a journal to be included it should exercise quality control on submitted papers through an editor, editorial board and/or a peer-review system
- DOAB: Directory of Open Access Books — includes over 2757 Academic peer-reviewed books from 94 publishers
For further information about Open Access check the Library's Open Access LibGuide.
