Research impact  

Research impact is increasingly important in government funding for research activity within the university sector. This has placed considerable emphasis on tracking citations of a researcher's published works and publishing within highly-ranked journals.

This guide provides information and tools for measuring research impact:

• Citation impact
• Journal impact
• Book impact
• Researcher impact
• Support

Citation databases are key tools in demonstrating the impact of an individual published paper or of a researcher's body of published work. They can be used to:

• Demonstrate the impact of an article by the number of times it has been cited since it was published (citing references)
• Use the author's references (cited references) to find the research that underpinned his or her work
• Find related work in a field of research
• Track the work of colleagues or competitors
• Track the development of a theory
• Identify influential (highly cited) papers and researchers or research groups

As no single database will contain complete information on who has cited a particular work, it is advisable to use multiple sources.

An impact factor is one way of measuring the relative ranking of a journal within a particular field. Ranked lists of journals can be used to:

• Identify prestigious and influential journals in a particular discipline
• Identify highly ranked journals in which to publish
• Help determine the allocation of research funding