Adapted from "Vertigo Ventures, & Digital Science. (2016). Collecting research impact evidence: Best practice guidance for the research community." https://www.research-strategy.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/collecting_research_impact_evidence_best_practice_guidance.pdf
Consider any of the following for support:
The button below will take you to a Service Now form where you can ask to meet with a librarian and discuss what evidence you are looking for. When you book a research consultation you speak to an education liaison librarian. They know the tools where you can collect research impact and attention metrics.
Grant bodies and research institutions evaluate research impact and engagement using multiple metrics and approaches. The industry-standard citation databases offers a range of metrics and methods of tracking impact. Each of the metrics and indicators focus on separate aspects of research performance. These data sources are most accurate once the researcher takes control of the data in their researcher profiles. Start with setting up your ORCID and having it linked in Minerva Elements , Upgrading your ORCID integration (Elements) and Writing to ORCID from Elements |
The button below leads to the updated Academic Career Benchmarks & Indicators (ACBI).
Research performance encompasses both research productivity and research quality. Research institutions and researchers often attempt to demonstrate research performance by using metrics. Research metrics alone are not sufficient to describe performance. Expert opinion should be added to demonstrate performance.
The Research Metrics Guidebook (Elsevier, p.5) states that:
We provide only two rules in the use of metrics within this Guidebook: always use more than 1 metric to give insights into a question, and always use metrics in conjunction with peer review and/or expert opinion to support any conclusions. This "triangulation" of approaches will increase the reliability of conclusions drawn if these distinct types of information reinforce each other, and will flag areas for further investigation if they do not. Beyond this, there are no black-and-white rules. The best approach is to use common sense to ensure metrics are used responsibly.
Researchers that need to find information about which metrics to choose from and include into their grant applications or academic promotion applications or for similar exercises can use the Metrics Toolkit to help inform their choice. In addition, also discuss this with your supervisor or a peer.
Appropriate use of research metrics
To learn more about improving your researcher profiles, click the button below.
Researcher profiles, identifiers and social networks