Metrics: what do they measure?

We have been preparing to contribute to one of the Academic Development Directorate's sessions for researchers (Publishing from Mature Projects) and, as part of this, have been drawing together some of the different measures of publication impact and influence.  This is not a complete list, but a representation of some of the metrics out there.

H-Index

This is a measure an individual's citations, based upon how many of their publications have been cited multiple times.  An H-Index of 4 indicates that 4 of the researcher's publications have been cited at least 4 times.  An H-Index of 10 indicates that 10 of the researcher's publications have been cited at least 10 times.  For this reason, experienced researchers are much more likely to have a higher H-Index than those in their early career.  Services such as Google Scholar and Web of Science offer H-Index calculations, based on the data they hold.  For this reason, it is possible to get different H-Index measures for the same researcher, dependent upon the tool used to calculate it. Find out more on Wikipedia.

Impact Factor

Perhaps the best known of the research metrics, this measures the 'impact' of a journal title.  This is produced by a commercial company, Thomson Reuters, based on their data.  For this reason, to access the full list of factors, a subscription fee must be paid (generally individual ones are available on the journal's website and can be found with a quick Google).  It is worked out from two years' worth of data, by dividing the number of times that articles in that journal title were cited in indexed research titles by the total number of articles published in the journal during the same period.  Again, there are varying critiques of this measure.

Altmetrics

Altmetrics have grown as a complementary measure to the more traditional ones and generally measure at the level of the individual research output (journal article, book chapter, data set...).  Rather than focusing upon counting citations in traditional research publications, these also include mentions on social media, inclusion on news sites, articles picked up by blogs, and use by researchers (via the Mendeley service), amongst many other outlets.  There is more information on Altmetric, the main service provider, on the ILS website.

To find out more, contact a member of the Academic Services Team in ILS and we will be happy to work with you.

Altmetric for books and book chapters

The Altmetric service has recently been extended to cover books and book chapters, as well as journal articles. This service tracks, monitors and collates where research is being mentioned online and is a way in which authors can get a snapshot of who is talking about their research and where.

Altmetric will automatically analyse all books and book chapters on RaY with an ISBN so it is important to include this when depositing a record. If there is any data available it will display as the usual donut badge and details of the activity can then be viewed on the Altmetric website.

As an example, this badge is for the entry for Health 2.0 and Information Literacy for Rare and Orphan diseases on RaY:

For a brief introduction to this extended service visit Altmetric for Books and for more general information on using Altmetric to support your research see Altmetric on the ILS webpages.


For help in uploading your research to RaY the institutional repository, email RaY

Keeping track of where your publications are being used

As a researcher in a university, one of the key things you are asked to do is to keep track of whether your research has influence or impact.  There are lots of ways of doing this, but we thought it would be useful to highlight two of the ways of discovering how and why your publications have been used.

Altmetrics

The Altmetric service is available via the ILS webpages and you can also log in directly to their website using your usual YSJ details. Altmetric tracks mentions and references to individual pieces of research across news sites, social media, blogs and much more.  You can set up a personal account to track specific works if you wish.

Google metrics

If you have a Google account, you can set it up to monitor citations to any of your research it has picked up in its Google Scholar service.  Just go to Google Scholar and click on 'My Citations' option.

Your academic liaison librarian would be happy to go through these and other tracking options with you.