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Research Impact Assessment (Health Sciences)

Explore methods and tools for assessing your research impact, including citation tracking and altmetrics.

Policy and Society Frameworks and Indicators

As you think through ways to demonstrate policy and societal impact, be sure to look at evaluation frameworks to get ideas for research impact indicators.

Keep in mind that searching for this content is rarely linear. Mentions of research outputs in the resources below may use the author's name, or the title of the study--or just the university.

Below you will find examples of tools to use, and you can learn more about alternative indicators here.

Highlighted Resource: Overton

Overton is the world’s largest collection of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers. This interdisciplinary database provides value in two main ways. 

Using Overton, you can:

  • Track Policy Influence and Impact: Allows you to see where scholarly work is cited in policy documents.
  • Search for Policy Documents: Search or browse policy documents across all disciplines.

*One year trial through March 15, 2023.

Tools to Identify Mentions, Citations, and Downloads

The resources below will help you see whether your research has been cited in policy documents.

The resources below will help you see whether your research has been mentioned in news resources or social media (Altmetric Explorer). Learn more about Altmetric Explorer and alternative metrics

Use the resources below to identify usage statistics for your datasests.

The resources below will let you see where your journal article has been cited.

The resources below will help you see whether your research has been mentioned in legislation.

What are Alternative Metrics?

Alternative metrics (altmetrics) are public engagement indicators that measure interactions with publications in non-scholarly venues like blogs, tweets, article downloads, and shares.

Altmetrics can help researchers to tell a story about how people are engaging with their research outside of traditional academic paths such as citations and conferences. Altmetrics, such as mentions of research articles in YouTube videos, Wikipedia pages, tweets, or major news outlets, provide a qualitative complement to traditional quantitative measures like citation counts.

Highlighed Resource: Altmetric Explorer for Institutions

Altmetric Explorer for Institutions tracks attention around your research publications in social media, news, and policy resources.