About Research Impact

Research Impact

- is the use of metrics, tools, and techniques to communicate the value of your scholarly work, demonstrate how your work impacts others in your subject discipline and beyond, and ensure that your work is visible and discoverable.

Four ways to measure scholarly research impact:

Source: Priem, J.; Taraborelli, D.; Groth, P.; Neylon, C. Altmetrics: a manifesto (2011)

Why Research Impact matters

• Criterion of funding agencies in considering where to invest research funds 

• Research evaluation and management as part of a grant application

• Evidence for promotion such as tenure applications or job applications 

• University rankings and institutional publication activities to inform publishing and communication strategy

Research impact measures are different across disciplines such as publication types (e.g. articles vs. monographs), scientific communication nature, publication length and frequency, aging speed of publications. Therefore, Discipline Impact Factor needs to be considered and measuring metrics have to be adapted to suit the discipline in question.

An Impact Factor is

- a quantitative measure of the relative importance of either a journal, individual article or scientist in science and social science literature and research. 

- It is important to use several sources to gauge the true impact of a journal's or scientist’s work because each database used different methodologies to produce an impact factor that shows slightly different results.

There are different types of Impact Factors: Journal Impact Factor, Author Impact Factor, Article Impact Factor.   Explanations of these terminologies are shown in next box following this one.

Even though the use of impact data generated based on a thorough understanding of the methodology used is essential, there are still controversial aspects of using impact factors:

• It is unclear if the number of times a paper is cited actually measures its quality.

• Some databases that calculate impact factors fail to incorporate other publications including textbooks, handbooks and reference books.

• Certain niche disciplines have low numbers of journals and usage.  As a result, it is better to compare journals or researchers within those same discipline.

• Review articles of the journal articles normally are cited more often and therefore can skew results.

• Self-citing may also skew results.

• Some databases/resources used to calculate impact factors have inadequate international coverage.

• Editorial sources may artificially inflate an impact factor.