Applications for grants or promotions frequently require evidence of the quantity, quality, and impact of your academic research. You can use analysis tools, such as SciVal, InCites or Altmetric Explorer to collect research metrics and produce a portfolio of evidence of the standing and reach of your research, and your collaborations.

Not all metrics will be relevant for telling the story of your research – it will depend on your discipline and research outputs. Different metrics apply to journal articles, monographs, conference papers, practice-based outputs, and many others.

The purpose of this guide is to:

• Help researchers identify the metrics that capture the reach and impact of their particular type of research
• Provide guidance on using the tools to extract the best metrics
• Supply example statements that illustrate using the metrics to prove the impact of your research.

This guide is aimed at researchers beginning the process of building research evidence. More experienced researchers looking for a comprehensive and detailed listing of metrics available can consult our Research metrics and Altmetrics library guides.

Note: The data from analysis tools depends on other sources, for example, SciVal data is extracted from the Scopus database. So it is crucial to keep your author profiles up-to-date, to ensure the evidence you are gathering is accurate. For more information on author profiles, consult the Research Profiles and ORCID library guide.