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Making an Impact: Tracking Your Research Metrics

Learn strategies for assessing the impact of your research with this step-by-step guide to research metrics

Altmetrics Tools

More and more library resources are tracking use statistics.  Check the websites or databases where your research output appears to track metrics like views and downloads. 

  • E.g. Web of Science provides usage counts (abstract views) for articles over the last 180 days and over the last 3 years:

 

Altmetric Aggregators

A number of advanced altmetrics tools are available for researchers (with both free and subscription-based options):

Altmetric Explorer

Altmetric link

Altmetric Explorer helps you track the attention your work receives from various non-academic sources (from social and traditional media to policy documents to blogs). 

Users can review attention at the author-, departmental-, or institutional-level and use this data for reporting, goal setting, and benchmarking activities.

Impact Story


Impact Story Link

Impact Story is a free service that tracks the buzz surrounding your research output on Twitter, blogs, and news outlets and generates a wide variety of altmetrics and statistics based on this data. Accounts can be synchronized with ORCiD to update automatically when new content is published.

A Twitter account is all that is required to get started.   

Plum Analytics


Plum Analytics Link

Plum Analytics is an altmetrics tracker currently integrated into the library's CINAHL database.

  1. When searching CINAHL, look for the Plum Metrics symbol  beneath each result.
  2. Hover over the symbol to review metrics like views, saves, and social media mentions: