Research Impact

Altmetrics

Altmetrics measure the impact of scholarly content. It is based on how far and wide it travels through the social Web (e.g. Twitter), social bookmarking (e.g. CiteULike), news, and collaboration tools (e.g. Mendeley). They offer alternative metrics to the more traditional ones, such as the Impact factor and H-Index.

Tools to increase your visibility

• ORCID
  • Link all your publications with one unique persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher.
  • Research outputs uploaded to the NWU-IR (Boloka) are automatically pushed to the author's ORCID record.
  • You can add all your other publications through Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science.
  • Link your ORCID account to every research item you publish so people can easily track or locate your other research outputs.
• DaYta Ya Rona (figshare)
  • Figshare is an online repository where users can make their research outputs available.
  • You can upload any file format to be previewed in the browser, from posters, presentations, datasets, and codes.
  • Data can be shared privately with collaborators to comply with funder and publisher mandates or made public in the name of open research.
  • Open up your research so new audiences can find, share and cite it.
  • All research outputs made public receive a DOI, making them citable with the most liberal Creative Commons license where possible.
• Google Scholar Citations Profile
  • Create a Google Scholar Profile and add your publications. 
  • Make your profile public so it will appear on Google Scholar results when people search for your name.
  • You can then check who is citing your publications and your H-Index.
• Social Media
  • Share your research with a broader audience on social media platforms so it can be viewed, shared, liked, downloaded, and discussed.
  • If a publisher's policy does not allow sharing a full-text article, you can still provide a summary and link it to the original publication.
  • Create an account on the most frequently used social media platforms: LinkedIn, Academia.edu, ResearchGate, SlideShare, Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, etc.

Tools to track your online research activity

• Altmetrics from Scopus
  • Scopus captures the altmetric data of an article indexed on Scopus. It can be found in the abstract view of an article below the Related Documents box in the right-hand column. 
  • Altmetrics from Scopus will only appear when data is available.
  • Scopus captures the following data:
    • total number of times popular media mentions the article
    • total number of mentions of an article in a blog, Tweets, or other social media posts
    • citation impact as compared to articles of similar subjects
    • if or when it is added to Mendeley library
    • mentions in Wikipedia articles
• OurResearch
  • OurResearch is a web-based tool you can use to discover the online impact of your research.
  • To log in, use your ORCID or Twitter account.
  • Impactstory generates data from Twitter, blogs, news outlets, and other online sources, which it displays in a single report for your convenience
• Altmetric Bookmarklet for Researchers
  • Researchers can install Bookmarklet for free.
  • It lets you instantly see Altmetric data for your published research output with a DOI.
• Altmetric Badges for Individual Researchers
  • Individual Researchers can embed badges for free.
  • Get a summary of the online attention surrounding your work.
  • It can demonstrate the reach of your work to your profile visitors, and it is an excellent method for showcasing the reach of your work.
  • To do so, add Almetrics badges to your website or online CV.

Bibliometrics

Bibliometric analysis use data on numbers and authors of scientific publications and on articles and the citations therein (and in patents) to measure the “output” of individuals/research teams, institutions, and countries, to identify national and international networks, and to map the development of new (multi-disciplinary) fields of science and technology.

H-index

The index is based on the distribution of citations from a researcher's publications. Jorge E. Hirsch developed the h-index as a process for quantifying the output of an individual researcher. Hirsch writes:  “I propose the index h, defined as the number of papers with citation number ≤ h, as a useful index to calculate a researcher's scientific output”.

How to calculate your h-index?

To manually calculate your h-index, organise articles in descending order based on the times they have been cited. For example, an author has eight papers that have been cited 33, 30, 20, 15, 7, 6, 5, and 4 times. This tells us that the author's h-index is 6. An h-index of 6 means that this author has published at least six papers that have each received at least six citations.

More context

• The first paper has been cited 33 times and gives us a 1 (there is one paper that has been cited at least once).
• The second paper has been cited 30 times and gives us a 2 (two papers have been cited at least twice).
• The third paper gives us a three and all the way up to 6 with the sixth-highest paper.
• The final two papers have no effect in this case, as they have been cited less than six times.

(Shannon Gordon, Univ of Waterloo library)

Citation Tools

• Scopus
• Web of Science
• Google Scholar Citations

Manual

• How to find your H-index on Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science