Scholarly Communications @ CSUB

Research impact is the demonstrable contribution that research makes to academia and society.

Why measure or track research impact?

• Strengthen your case when you apply for promotion or tenure
• Quantify return on research investment for grant renewals and progress reports
• Strengthen future funding requests by showing value of your research 
• Identify who is using your work and confirm that it is appropriately credited
• Identify collaborators within or outside of your subject area

While there are many reasons to measure research impact, there has not been universal agreement on how to do so. Additionally, as methods of scholarly communication expand beyond the traditional journal article, existing metrics become less relevant. New metrics continue to be developed in attempts to improve upon existing measures.

This guide covers some of the more common measures of author, journal, and article impact - what they are, and how to find them. It also covers new metrics that go beyond published journal articles. Finally, it gives tips on how to broaden the impact of your research.

This guide details various ways of measuring research impact, particularly through traditional means of publishing and citation.  Before you begin to delve into the various citation metrics, we recommend you do the following three things:

• Sign up for an ORCID Identifier:  The Open Researcher Community ID is an increasingly recognized persistent digital identifier.  The unique number assigned to you will allow publishers and aggregators of scholarly literature to distinguish you from researchers with similar names.  This is a powerful tool in author disambiguation and it takes just a few minutes to sign up. Go to orcid.org and follow the instructions to register for your ORCID identifier or to connect an existing ORCID account to your Cornell NetID. Have questions?  Contact Kirstin Lattimore at klattimore1@csub.edu. You may also consult CSUB's ORCID libguide.
• Get a ResearcherID with Web of Science:  A ResearcherID can be linked to your ORCID number and facilitates citation metrics and publication tracking using Web of Science tools. With a ResearcherID, you will be included in the Web of Science author index allowing other researchers to learn more about your work and affiliations.  
• Create a Google Scholar Citations Profile:  Google scholar citations allows authors to track citations to their scholarly works and to calculate numerous citation metrics based on Google Scholar citation data.  By setting up a profile, you will be able to disambiguate yourself from authors with the same or similar names.