What are Research Metrics?
Metrics fall into two broad categories:
- Bibliometrics or citation metrics
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
These are measurement tools used to capture and track indicators of online engagement with research outputs. Altmetrics are complementary to traditional citation-based metrics.
Research metrics can:
- provide evidence to support claims made in grant and promotions applications.
- help to benchmark and assess your performance against peers.
- be used as part of a strategic publishing plan to identify suitable publishing outlets.
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.
Metrics are measured in three main ways:
| Research indicators | Assessing the... | Such as... |
|---|---|---|
| Publication level | publication source | journal or book |
| Article level | research | article, chapter or document |
| Author level | researcher | you |
Sources of metrics
There are several sources from which you can gather and analyse research metrics and Altmetric Explorer.
Results will vary between sources due to the differences in coverage of publication types and discipline areas, so it is recommended to use a variety of sources.
In addition, Western Sydney University staff can access a personalised Research Activity Statement from their Research Portal page.
Key Sources includes:
The University encourages all academic staff to have three author identifiers - ORCID, Scopus and ResearcherID (now hosted on Publons). Other key reasons are:
- Author disambiguation - they assist in linking research outputs to the correct author.
- It reduces administrative burden, improves data accuracy and the discoverability of research outputs.
- Author metrics allow you to measure how often your work is cited and can assist in demonstrating your author impact.
- Impact can be measured in terms of number of publications, citation counts (for individual publications, all publications or as an average number).