Research Metrics Toolkit

Metrics fall into two broad categories:

• Bibliographic metrics (bibliometrics)
  These are measurement tools used across the scholarly publishing industry to measure the performance of a publication, publication source, or researcher. Bibliometrics methods apply quantitative analysis and statistics to describe patterns of publication and citation activity within a given field or body of literature.
• Alternative metrics (altmetrics)
  These are measurement tools used to capture and track indicators of online engagement with research outputs. Altmetrics are complementary to traditional citation-based metrics.

What are the benefits of using metrics?

Research metrics can:

• provide evidence of influence or performance when applying for grants and promotions
• help to benchmark and assess your performance against peers
• be used as part of a strategic publishing plan to identify suitable publishing outlets
• may indicate your research performance and attention to your research.
• quantify the return on research investment when applying for grant renewals
• identify who is using your work
• highlight the value of your research in progress reports, including school, institute and research centre reviews, and the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) framework
  
  Examples of metrics include:
  • number of publications
  • publication citations — the number of times a research work is cited by others (the assumption being that important or influential articles will be cited more often than other articles)
  • alternative metrics — based on internet mentions and attention.

Australia’s national research evaluation framework, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), draws upon a combination of publication citation metrics and expert peer review to identify and promote excellence across the full spectrum of research activity in Australia’s higher education institutions.

Learn more about metrics

• Metrics Toolkit — explore and choose metrics that may be best used for your situation
• Citation impact — an overview of how academic performance is evaluated, from Phd on Track

Find your publications and their citations

Watch how to navigate and use Web of Science and Scopus (YouTube playlist)

Measure the performance and rank of publications

• Scopus Sources - Use to find CiteScore, SJR and SNIP. Includes trends over time. This Scopus libguide provides an overview of Scopus metrics. It also includes this 'quick reference tool'.
• SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) quartiles - journals from Scopus are ranked according to weighted citations. Use it to find SCImago quartiles and ranks. Includes in-depth analysis and quartile trends over time.
• InCites: Journal Citation Reports (JCR) — journals from certain Web of Science indices are ranked according to their Journal Impact Factor. Use to find JCR quartiles and ranks; Journal Impact Factor (JIF). Includes in-depth analysis and quartile trends over time. Create an InCites account to access it from anywhere.
• Publish or Perish — for publications indexed in Google Scholar

Find influential researchers in a field

Based on publications in Web of Science:

• Essential Science Indicators (ESI) — discover the top 1% most cited researchers in a field
• Highly Cited Researchers — for exceptional research performance, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for a field

Find patent citations

For locating citing and cited patent information try these citation discovery tools.

Your metrics at WSU

Search for yourself or fellow researchers in Research Portal to see:

• researcher profiles
• grants reports and benchmarks
• publications reports (listed in Research Profiles and Repository)
• Research Activity Statements
• ERA data and reports
• SDGs
• National reports
• peer-reviewing activity (drawn from Web of Science Researcher Profiles)

Article-level metrics are usually available from the article's record page in different databases. However, to get some information, such as journal metrics, you may be required to go to other resources (e.g., SCImago). Similar to author metrics, the numbers might differ across databases due to their coverage.

Metrics and indicators for books and chapters can be challenging to find. This is due to the limitation in indexing books in the major citation databases (such as Scopus and Web of Science) compared to journals. Google Scholar is another key tool for gathering citation metrics and reviews of books and chapters.

Similar to books and chapters, article-level metrics for conference papers can be difficult to find. The prestige and credentials of the conference and its organiser can often indicate the quality and status of a conference in its related research fields.

It's critical to be strategic when choosing which conference to attend and present your papers at. For more information, see the Conference: The how-to-choose guide.

Author-level metrics are available from your profiles in Elements, Scopus, Web of Science, or Google Scholar and take into account all your publications that are indexed (available) in the related database. The numbers might be different in different databases due to their coverage.

You can use our subscribed benchmarking tools (SciVal and InCites) to indicate your work's engagement and outstanding impact within your discipline and the wider community. The benchmarking is available against your peers and overall institution, country or global performance.

Altmetrics, or Alternative Metrics, refers to data that indicate the impact or attention a particular work receives on social media such as views, downloads, mentions in the media, and shares via platforms such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook and Mendeley. Altmetric providers also track citations in publications such as policy documents, patents, and medical guidelines.

You can search Research Professional to identify grant recipients.

For creative writing, the following database offers information on reviews, awards and prizes your publications have received:

• AustLit

You can find social media mentions and other activities through Altmetric Explorer and Scopus (PlumX).

Google can be useful for finding media and news mentions.

You may find reviews by searching Google or the websites of the publisher or event organiser/curator.

For creative writing, the following database offers information on reviews, awards and prizes your publications have received:

• AustLit

For exhibitions and live performances, sales stats and audience/visitor numbers can indicate impact. The event organizer/curator often provides these statistics.

The publisher keeps book sales records for creative writing. Download figures are often available on the publisher's website.

Trove and WorldCat provide Australia and worldwide library holdings of books.