Quick Links
- Google Scholar @ U-M (with U-M Ann Arbor MGet It Links) This link opens in a new window
- Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
- Michigan Experts This link opens in a new window
- Scopus This link opens in a new window
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Library Contact
For more information or to schedule an individual or group consultation, contact the THL Research Impact Core.
What are Indicators of Impact?
There are a number of different indicators that researchers might use to quantify the impact of their publications, including, but not limited to:
- Number of citations: A count of the number of times an article, or set of articles, has been cited by other researchers.
- H-index: A measure that attempts to describe an author’s productivity and impact.
- Journal indicators: Measures that journals use to illustrate the ratio of citations received per article published. Many see this as indicative of a journal's prestige.
- Article Indicators: Indicators that provide insight into the citation impact of a particular article. Some article indicators are field-normalized which allow the indicator to be compared across disciplines.
Learn more about each of these by visiting the different pages in the navigation menu on the left. Watch the video below for a short introduction to bibliometrics, including a description of citation count and the h-index.
Benefits and Limitations of Impact Metrics
Quantitative publication metrics offer a relatively quick and seemingly concrete measure of research impact and are used widely in the assessment of academic health sciences research. However, metrics can lead to over-simplification and sometimes serve as direct proxies for impact at the expense of other valuable considerations.
Several efforts have led to frameworks that promote the application of assessment metrics as one important aspect of a broader assessment process.
- The Leiden ManifestoTen principles emanating from the International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators (Leiden University, Netherlands). Encourages the use of robust quantitative and qualitative data "with sensitivity to the aim and nature of the research that is evaluated."
- The Metric TideRecommendations from a 2014 multidisciplinary study of the United Kingdom research system. Encourages "responsible metrics," with quantitative indicators, expert judgment, and qualitative measures serving as complements to decision making.
- The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)DORA was published in 2013 and has since been signed by thousands of individuals and scientific organizations. DORA argues that the Journal Impact Factor should not be used in research assessment "as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles," among other considerations.