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Research Impact

About this guide

This guide mainly introduces how bibliomentrics are used for informing research impact. You will learn how to use some useful tools for finding bibliometrics, journal rankings and different levels of impacts (author, article, journal, etc.).

The societal and economic impacts of your research activities are also significant in your research journey. In 2019, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment introduced a new definition of research impact as “A change to the economy, society or environment, beyond contribution to knowledge and skills in research organisations” (p.9).

The following articles discussed the various ways to measure research impact:

Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics are indicators/metrics based on citation counts. These metrics are often used to analyse the impact of publications in a research field.

Use of Bibliometrics

  • Metrics, such as h-index, may help identify the impact of a researcher or a research output
  • Metrics may indicate research trends
  • Rankings and metrics may be used to inform decisions about journals to which you might submit your work for publication
  • Metrics may also help researchers decide which publication to be included in PBRF
  • Identify authors you might want to cite or collaborate with

Bibliometrics should always be interpreted cautiously. They are intended as a relative measure within a discipline, not as a numeric value to be taken in isolation.

A comparison of key citation analysis tools

 

 Scopus  Web of Science (WoS) Google Scholar (GS)
 Coverage
  • Over 23, 452 peer reviewed journals (including 5,500 open access journals)
  • Over 850s book series 
  • 9.8 million conference papers
  • Most scientific fields:  Health sciences, physical science and life science
  • More than 44 million patent records
  • Over 21,517 high impact journals
  • More than 123,000 books
  • Over 225,000 conference proceedings
  • Focuses on Sciences, with a strong focus on health sciences, natural sciences, engineering, computer science.
  • 18% indexed journals are open access journals.
  • Unable to determine the sources GS covers
  • Includes free online scholarly publications
  • Includes grey literature
  • Global scholarly resources across all subject areas
 Timeframe

From 1966

From 1900

  Unknown
 Metrics

 h-index

CiteScore, SJR, SNIP

 

 h-index

 Journal impact factor (JIF)

available in the Journal Citation Report database

 h-index, h5-index, h5-median
 Author ID
  • Scopus Author ID
  • Can link to ORCID
  • ResearcherID
  • Can link to ORCID
  • None
 Alerts
  • Article alerts
  • Document citation alerts
  • Author citation alerts
  • Article alerts
  • Citation alerts
  • Author search alerts
  • Search alerts
  • Article alerts
  • Follow authors & citations
 Strengths
  • More than half of its content originates from Europe, Latin America and the Asia Pacific region
  • Includes book indexes
  • Better search tools than WoS
  • With Citation and journal analysers  
  • Users can create citation reports
  • Covers greater periods
  • Includes book citation indexes; 10,000 books added each year.
  • With a citation analyse tool
  • Easy to use
  • May find citations of your work in books or web-based academic literature not found in Scopus or WoS
  • May find more NZ publications by using GS
 Limitations
  • Limited NZ / Australasia publications
  • No controlled vocabulary
  • Limited book citation indexing
  • Coverage outside the USA, UK and Netherlands is limited
  • The coverage of non-English journals is not as good as that of Scopus 
  • No controlled vocabulary
  • Sometimes you may find misspellings of author names and incorrect citations
  • Limited book citation indexing
  • Does not have the same sort of quality control as most library-subscribed databases
  • Does not have the citation analytical tools provided by WoS and Scopus
  • No controlled vocabulary

 Export to:

  • EndNote
  • Mendeley 
  • Zotero

 

Yes

 

 

Yes

 

 

Yes

 

Metrics toolkit

The new Metrics Toolkit may give you some ideas about the metrics available for researchers. Noted that this website doesn't cover these metrics: CiteScore (Scopus), SJR, SNIP, Snowball metrics, Eigenfactor, etc.

Get help from your librarians

If you need assistance on finding your research impact, please contact your Liaison Librarian, or the Team Leader, Research Support. We can help you with:

  • Finding journal rankings and impact factors
  • Finding citations of your outputs and h-index
  • Creating RSS feeds and alerts to keep up-to-date
  • Identifying bibliographic details for your output
  • Locating journal publisher details
  • Using researcher IDs and social networking tools to promote your research