Skip to Main Content

Research Impact Challenge

What are Metrics?

Metrics, also known as research metrics or bibliometrics, is a measurement of scholarly research using quantitative methods such as citation counts, downloads, mentions, and more. Metrics are also used to demonstrate the impact of research publications at the journal, article, and author levels, which help faculty and researchers show the reach of their scholarship for tenure and promotion, job opportunities, and grant funding among other things.

Metrics Toolkit

Explore the Metrics Toolkit site, which was developed to help scholars and evaluators understand and use citations, web metrics, and altmetrics responsibly in the evaluation of research.

The Metrics Toolkit provides evidence-based information about research metrics across disciplines, including how each metric is calculated, where you can find it, and how each should (and should not) be applied. You’ll also find examples of how to use metrics in grant applications, CV, and promotion packages.

Journal Information in Google Scholar

​Google Journal Citation Information 

Google Scholar ranks journals by impact factor. You can search by 

  • Top 100 Google Journals

  • By Discipline. For example, you can search by broad category with the drop down menu from the link above: You can further refine by subcategory

Google Scholar Top Journal search refine to Humanities and subcategory feminism and women's studies. 

Completing the Challenge

To complete the challenge for today, you will look up some author metrics for yourself. If you do not have any publications, you may want to look up information for your advisor or perhaps another faculty member in your department.

Complete and submit the form.

 

Terms used in Journal Metrics

Vocabulary for Citation Counts and Journal Impact Factors

What are citation counts? 

Broadly speaking, "citation counts" is ta term that describes the measurable times others refer to your work, typically in the format of a citation.  

What is a journal impact factor?

Journal impact factor is a method of measuring the impact of all content of a journal and is a way to rank the impact of that journal on a discipline.

More terms

  • Altmetrics
    • ​Non-traditional measure of bibliometrics (social media, scholarly networks, etc...)
    • This is starting to appear in LibrarySearch and other sources.
  • Eigenfactor Score: measures the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in Journal Citation Reports. It measures citations after removing self cites and other factors. 
  • H-index:
    • number of your papers (h) that have been cited at least h times over x many years. 
      • At least h many papers have been cited h many times. 
      • For example, an author or journal with an h-index of 30 has written at least 30 papers that have each had at least 30 citations. Thus, a higher h-index indicates more publications that have been cited more often. This metric is useful because it takes into account the uneven weight of highly cited papers or papers that have not yet been cited. 
  • i-10 index measures the number of articles that have been cited at least 10 times. 
    • For example, an i-10 index of 30 would mean that at least 30 journal articles had been cited 10 times. 
  • Self-citing: frowned upon, inflates cite counts.