Research Guides: Measuring Scholarly Research Impact: Tools for Author Impact Factors, Journal Impact Factors, Alternative Impact Factors

Measuring Tools for Author Impact Factors, Journal Impact Factors, Alternative Impact Factors

An author's impact on their discipline has traditionally been measured using the number of authored academic publications and the citation counts of those publications by other researchers.

Different algorithms are used to calculate an author impact 'score' using data on their publications (refer to the page "Citations and Indexes). Tools to track Author Impact include paid databases as well as some free sources.

Calculating Author Impact Factors using Web of Science Web of Science is an interdisciplinary database that tracks citations. To view your author metrics in Web of Science is to register for ResearcherID and add publications to your author profile (using ORCID, EndNote, Web of Science, etc.). You can also do an Author Search to see a record for the author that includes the author's publications and h-index. Bear in mind that due to name variations and some names being common, this record may or may not include only publications by your target researcher.
Calculating Author Impact Factors using Scopus To calculate your author impact in Scopus, perform an author search that match your search criteria. You can then click on the linked name to view the author profile. Once you've selected all variations of your name, you can view a citation overview that includes the h-index.
Calculating Author Impact Factors using Dimensions Dimensions enables analysis of author impact under the Researchers filter. Metrics include publication citations, Field citation ratio (FCR), Relative citation ratio (RCR), and Altmetric scores. Open the Researcher filter on the left panel to search for an author. Open Analytical Views on the right panel for the impact of this author's publications. In the Overview section, you can select indicators to analyze Author Impact.
Calculating Author Impact Factors using Google Scholar Once you've created a Google Scholar Profile, you can add your publications and see your h-index and i10-index. Publications like theses, books, and reports that might not be included in Scopus or Web of Science can be added in Google Scholar and will contribute to your citation count which might be different from Web of Science or Scopus.
Publish or Perish Publish or Perish is a downloadable software that uses data from Google Scholar to calculate a variety of metrics, beyond just the h-index.
Publish or Perish (PoP) Author Metrics Template After you export data from Publish or Perish, you can use this template to showcase your citation metrics, compare to similar authors / scholars in your field, and make your case.

Journal Impact factor is used to evaluate the relative importance of a journal on its field and to measure the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in a particular time period. Journal which publishes more review articles will get highest Impact Factors.

JCR: Journal Citation Reports (Web of Science) Journal Citation Reports provides citation data for journals, including virtually all areas of science, technology, and social sciences. Journal Citation Reports can show you the most frequently cited journals in a field, highest impact journals in a field based on a calculated impact factor and Eigenfactor score in a field.
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information from the Scopus® database.
SNIP Indicator SNIP stands for Source Normalized Impact per Paper. This indicator measures the average citation impact of the publications of a journal. Unlike Journal Impact Factor, SNIP corrects for differences in citation practices between scientific fields, thereby allowing for more accurate between-field comparisons of citation impact.

Alternative impact, alternative metrics (or Altmetrics), include measuring scholarship beyond traditional citations and bibliometrics (i.e., academic engagement and impact).

Examples include: mentions and citations of scholarship in news media, social media, public policy documents, patents, and online platforms such as Wikipedia, multimedia videos, open peer review platforms, blogs, and other online sources.

Altmetric in Scopus Scopus database is with interdisciplinary articles that is a good source of traditional impact measures (citation counts, author impact, journal impact). Scopus has also incorporated article-level altmetrics via a third-party application. A summary of article-level metrics displays in the right sidebar of an article's detail page (the page you see when you click the linked title in the search results). The summary includes field-weighted benchmarking and a link to an expanded view of the metrics.
Altmetric Bookmarklet Want to find out the Altmetric details for a research article or other output? Install the free bookmarklet in your bookmarks toolbar in Chrome, Firefox or Safari, then view article-level metrics when reading that online journal article with one-click.
Embeddable Altmetric Badges Embed code to create the colorful Altmetric 'donut' for a particular article using its DOI, PMID, or other unique ID.
OurResearch OurResearch, formerly known as Impact/story, is an open-source, web-based tool that helps researchers "tell data-driven stories about their impacts".
Plum Analytics This tool provides insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment. Collectively known as PlumX Metrics, gathers and brings together appropriate research metrics for scholarly research output in five categories: Citations, Usage, Captures, Mentions, and Social Media.