What is Research Impact?

Research impact aims to describe the reach and influence of a body of work.

It can be used by individuals or groups to:

• Strengthen a case for promotion or tenure
• Demonstrate how grant dollars have impacted academia and society
• Bolster grant applications 
• Identify who is citing a body of work
• Find collaborators

This guide covers some of the more populars measures of author, journal, and article impact. Many of these metrics are proprietary to specific companies.

Best Practices for using research metrics:

• Metrics are not a substitute for informed, qualitative assessment.
• Metrics should be easy to understand, transparent, and open.
• Different contexts and disciplines may require different sets of metrics.
• The people being evaluated should have the opportunity to verify the data. 

For more information on guidelines and ethics, see the reports listed below.