Citation analysis can be used to determine the citation impact of authors, articles, and journals. Beyond basic citation counts, there are measures such as the h-index and the g-index which are used to quantify the impact of an individual author.
Qualitative measures are output measures that are not easily quantifyable numerically. These may include stakeholder interviews, resource surveys, user feedback, focus groups, and questionnnaires, that will capture information about the cycle of usage and impact.
Use/download data
Another method of assessing citation impact is to employ usage data such as the number of downloads for an article. Researchers are now looking at whether download statistics could be used to predict future citations (SLU).
Scientometrics 2.0
There is a growing movement calling for the measurement of scholarly impact drawn from Web 2.0 data. Given that researcher participation in Web 2.0 tools is not insignificant, and is likely to grow as the "born-digital" generation move toward and into tenured positions, social Web metrics may become increasingly influential (Priem and Hemminger, 2010).
Guidance documents for assessing and documenting research impact as well as resources for locating evidence of research impact. Designed for biomedical research, but the model can be usefully applied in disciplines where research is disseminated in vehicles beyond the traditional journal literature.
A team of academics based at the London School of Economics, the University of Leeds and Imperial College have been working on a ‘Research Impacts’ project aimed at developing precise methods for measuring and evaluating the impact of research in the public sphere. This guidance document provides evidence-based advice on how to ensure that your work achieves its maximum visibility and influence with both academic and external audiences.
3 modules: introductory overview; journal ranking; bibliometrics to support your career and research strategy. Includes videos, quizzes and other interactive elements. A collaborative project of four Irish academic libraries.
Describes the two roads to open access publishing and the problems of self-archiving.
Citation Impact and Open Access
What is the effect of Open Access on citations to articles?
A number of studies have now proved that there is a measurable increase in citation impact for open access articles. The size of the increase varies and depends on the year and on the discipline (Swan & Chan, 2009).
