Scholarly impact metrics provide evidence of impact for scholarly work. While impact metrics are not without critics, familiarizing yourself with them can provide you with some information regarding the extent to which your work is making an impact in your field or beyond. By examining the data that these metrics provide, you can evaluate whether you current publishing strategy is effective or whether you should consider alternative venues for disseminating your work.
Impact metrics can also be beneficial when it comes time to write a scholarly impact narrative for tenure, promotion, or other evaluative processes. By referencing specific metrics, you can justify your narrative by providing both qualitative and quantitative indicators of impact.
Scholarly impact metrics can be used to evaluate impact at three different levels.
In addition to these three levels, we can also differentiate between traditional metrics and altmetrics (i.e. alternative metrics). Traditional metrics include citation counts, the h-index, and journal impact factor. While traditional metrics are typically used to measure the impact of research within the scholarly community, altmetrics provide insight into a work's societal impact. They often reflect online discussions of research, such as Wikipedia citations, social media mentions, media coverage, or references in public policy documents.
Different databases and other sources of scholars metrics have different strengths depending the scholarly literature and disciplines indexed within those sources. For example, Scopus and Web of Science have better coverage for the social sciences than for the arts and humanities. The tables below suggest sources for scholarly metrics for different types of scholarly objects.
Scholarly Object: Journal Articles
| Metric | Data Source |
|---|---|
| Mentions | Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, or Twitter |
| Article usage |
Number of times accessed, viewed, or downloaded: Open access repositories, journal websites |
| Article level impact: Number of citations |
Scopus: citations aggregated from articles published in and cited by journals indexed in Scopus Web of Science: citations aggregated from articles published in and cited by journals indexed in Web of Science Google Scholar: citations aggregated by web crawling of online peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content |
| Author-level impact: h-index | Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The h-values calculated by the different sources are not equivalent as they are based on different collections of journals. |
| Journal-level impact |
Journal impact factor: Incites Journal Citation Reports Scimago Journal Rank (SJR): Scimago Journal & Country Rank Other journal information: Ulrichsweb, The Serials Directory |
Scholarly Object: Books
| Metric | Data Source |
|---|---|
| Mentions | Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, or Twitter |
| Book usage |
Number of times accessed, viewed, or downloaded: Open access repositories, publisher websites Sales: Publisher websites, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble websites Library ownership: OCLC Worldcat Database |
| Number of citations |
Scopus: citations aggregated from books indexed in Scopus Web of Science: citations aggregated from books indexed in Web of Science Google Scholar: citations aggregated by web crawling of online peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content Various databases: Citations manually counted through full text search. Appropriate databases may include JSTOR, ProQuest, Oxford Scholarship Online |
| Book-level impact: |
Cited/Included in Syllabi/Libguides/Bibliographies: Advanced Google search, search through Libguides (library resources created by librarians). Reviews or awards: Advanced Google search, library book reviews databases, Google Scholar. |
| Quality of Press | Peer review |
Scholarly Object: Creative Works
| Metric | Data Source |
|---|---|
| Mentions | Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, or Twitter |
| Create Work Usage |
Number of performances or exhibits Number of times recordings accessed, view, or downloaded: open access repositories, publisher websites Library ownership of creative work: OCLC Worldcat Database |
| Create Work Impact |
Cited/Included in Syllabi/Libguides/Bibliographies: Advanced Google search, search through Libguides (library resources created by librarians). Reviews and awards: Advanced Google Search, Nexis Uni, Newspaper Source |
Scholarly Object: Non-peer-reviewed works shared via the Research Repository @ WVU or other repositories
| Metric | Data Source |
|---|---|
| Mentions | Number of social media mentions: Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. (PlumX tracks this in the Research Repository @ WVU) |
| Usage | Number of times accessed, viewed, or downloaded (tracked via Research Repository author dashboard) |
| Number of Citations |
Research Repository: Citations from PlumX that derives citations from Scopus. Google Scholar: citaitons aggregated by web crawling of online peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content. |
This information was based on Herbert, Bruce; Potvin, Sarah; Budzise-Weaver, Tina (2016). Best Practices for the Use of Scholarly Impact Metrics. Available electronically from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/156054.
