LibGuides: Research LibGuide: Research metrics

Research metrics

Research metrics

Research metrics are indicators used to measure the impact, visibility, and quality of research outputs. These metrics help assess the influence and significance of research within the academic community and beyond. In this page, we have shared some commonly used research metrics and methods to measure research impact.

If you need to measure your research impact for grant applications, professional promotion or improving your research profile, please contact the Library. We could help with generating your research metrics indicators and interpreting the data to show your research best story.

Research metrics indicators

Author level metrics indicators

Citations are a fundamental metric used to measure research impact. They indicate the number of times a research paper has been cited by other authors. The H index is a common tool used by authors to quantify their individual impact. It represents the relationship between the number of papers an author has published and the number of times the author has been cited. Three commonly used databases to calculate an H Index include Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar

Journal metrics indicators

Journal Impact Factor (JIF): The JIF measures the average number of citations received by articles published in a specific journal. It provides an indication of the journal's prestige and influence within a particular field. JIFs are typically calculated annually and can be found in the Journal Citation Reports database.

CiteScore helps to measure journal citation impact. Free, comprehensive, transparent and current metrics calculated using data from Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.

SJR or SCImago Journal Rank, is based on the concept of a transfer of prestige between journals via their citation links. SJR Measures the prestige of citations received by a journal and field-normalizes them. The methodology is similar to that of Google PageRank. The average SJR value for all journals in Scopus is 1.000.

SNIP or Source Normalized Impact per Paper, is a sophisticated metric that accounts for field-specific differences in citation practices. SNIP is a ratio between the “Raw Impact per Paper” compared to the expected Citations per Publication, of that journal’s field. It’s a field-normalized metric. The average SNIP value for all journals in Scopus is 1.000.

Article metrics indicators

Citation Count Citation Count in SciVal indicates the total citation impact of an entity: how many citations have this entity’s publications received?

Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) Field-Weighted Citation Impact in SciVal indicates how the number of citations received by an entity’s publications compares with the average number of citations received by all other similar publications in the data universe: how do the citations received by this entity’s publications compare with the world average?

Alternative metrics

Altmetrics
Altmetrics (alternative metrics) measure the impact of research beyond traditional citations. They include metrics such as social media mentions, downloads, views, saves, and discussions. Altmetrics provide a broader perspective on the dissemination and public engagement of research.

PLUM Analytics

PlumX Metrics
PlumX Metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment. Examples include, when research is mentioned in the news or is tweeted about. Collectively known as PlumX Metrics, these metrics are divided into five categories to help make sense of the huge amounts of data involved and to enable analysis by comparing like with like. PlumX gathers and brings together appropriate research metrics for all types of scholarly research output.