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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

What is a Researcher Profile?

  • Online profile used to keep track of your research output (e.g. books, journals, conference presentations, patents, etc.)
  • A Unique Author Identifier distinguishes your work from others publishing under similar names
  • Designed for both personal use and to be shared with other researchers in online communities.

Why Should I Establish a Researcher Profile?

1) Distinguish Your Work

  • Distinguish yourself from similarly named authors
  • Unify name variations used throughout your career 

2) Meet Publication Requirements

  • Include your identifier in submissions to popular journals, databases, and funding agencies

3) Demonstrate Your Research Impact

  • Calculate a variety of citation-based metrics (e.g. h-index, citation impact, collaboration network, etc.)

4) Build Your Professional Network

  • Connect with a global community of researchers 
  • Discover others with similar research interests
  • Explore opportunities for future collaborations

Getting Started with Researcher Profiles

The library recommends registering for the following three interconnected profile/id tools:

  1. ORCID
  2. My Citations (Google Scholar)
  3. Researcher ID (Thomson Reuters)

Three logos: Google, ORCID, RESEARCHERID.

This will give you the best coverage for all your potential needs. Once you have set up your profile in one tool, the others can be easily synchronized, so it is like having three tools in one. Best of all, they are all free!

Click on the tabs above for more information.

 

Questions? Contact the Health Sciences Library Information Desk

hslib@mcmaster.ca,  905-525-9140 ext. 22327

ORCID Logo

When you set up an ORCID researcher profile, you are assigned a Unique Author Identifier used to distinguish your work from other researchers with similar names. Your ORCID is accepted during the submission process to nearly all academic journals and is an indexed/searchable field in leading databases like Medline (PubMed) and Web of Science.  

You can add citations to your ORCID profile manually or populate it automatically by synchronizing it with an existing researcher profile (e.g. My Citations; ResearcherID) or citation management tool (i.e. EndNote; RefWorks)     

Key Features

  • Very popular and widely recognized Unique Author Identifier
  • Integration with MacID credentials (see Instructions below)
  • Easily synchronized with other researcher profiles

 

Instructions

Google Scholar Logo

My Citations is a researcher profile tool integrated into Google Scholar. When you create an account, Google will automatically search for publications it believes to be yours and ask you to verify these citations as your own. You can also add citations manually for any publications that Google may have missed. 

As you continue to publish, your My Citations profile will update automatically, always asking you to verify the citations it finds before adding them to your profile.

Please Note: Setting up a My Citations profile requires an existing Google Account (e.g. Gmail account).  If you do not have a Google Account, set one up here.

 

Key Features

  • Automatic profile updates
  • Basic citation metrics (citation count, h-index, i10 index)
  • Does not assign Unique Identifier, but can be easily linked to other identifiers (i.e. ORCID; ResearcherID)

 

Instructions

Researcher ID Logo

ResearcherID a researcher profile and author identifier integrated into Thomson Reuters products (i.e. Web of Science; InCites; EndNote). The ResearcherID author identifier makes it easy to calculate all kinds of citation-based metrics and demonstrate the impact your research is having on the world.    

You can add citations to your ResearcherID profile manually or populate it automatically by synchronizing it with an existing researcher profile (e.g. My Citations; ORCID) or citation management tool (e.g. EndNote; RefWorks)  

Register for ResearcherID here

 

Key Features

  • Retroactively assigns author identifiers to all publications indexed in the Web of Science
  • InCites integration allows for quick calculation of advanced impact metrics (e.g. h-index; percentile rank; collaboration network) 
  • Easily synchronized with other researcher profiles

 

Instructions

Tags: Researchers