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About Research Impact

This guide talks about nuts and bolts of Research Impact

Different Levels of Research Impact Factors

Author Impact Factor is the scientific value (h-index) of a given researcher or author.  Tools for this type of impact factor includes Web of Science, Scopus, Semantic Scholar (mostly for STEM fields), Dimensions and Google Scholar.   Check out this illustration guide to know more about h-index and how to calculate your h-index.

Notes: citation counts may be different in each one because each one is indexing different journals. Each database has its own strengths and interesting facets.

Article Impact Factor is the measure on article level including citation counts in social media sites, as well as open peer or crowd-based recommendations or reviews.  Citation counts can be found in Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions and Google Scholar.  Additionally, Altmetrics is a tool/term used to denote the social-media-based, article-level metrics.  Check out the Altmetrics guide for more details.

Journal Impact Factor is frequently used as a proxy for the importance of a journal to its field. Tools for finding the impact of a journal or groups of journals include Journal Citation Reports, Eigenfactor and SCImago Journal & Country Rank.  Check out the Journal Impact Factor guide for understand how to it calculated.

The Impact Factor of a monograph (Book) is difficult to determine.  Authors can estimate proxy measures like book reviews, cited by counts, and availability in libraries to demonstrate reach and engagement.  Tools can give an estimate such as Book Citation Index, WorldCat (OCLC) and Google Scholar.