There are large numbers of researchers and scholars who are working on various research studies contributing to the vast universe of knowledge. However, how does one measure the impact of their work or contribution in their respective fields of study? This can be done by employing metrics to gauge the sway of an individual in their area of research or scholarly work, which is called assessing their academic influence.
Key metrics to quantify academic influence
Several key metrics are commonly used to quantify academic influence. Here’s a look at the most widely recognized ones:
Journal impact factors: Academicians and researchers generally aim to publish their research paper in high impact journals to enhance the impact and visibility of their work. When you need to compare journals and identify the ones with high impact, the Journal impact factor will be a useful tool. The journal impact factor is a journal level index that is widely used to measure the significance or rank of a journal. It is calculated by a simple equation that involves dividing the number of articles published in the previous two years that are cited in indexed journals in a current year by the total number of citable publications in the previous two years. The Clarivate Analytics annually collates the impact factor of journals in their Journal Citation Reports.
H-index: As you conduct cutting edge research and publish new research papers, it is always helpful to know the impact of your publications and your scientific output as a researcher. The h-index is a useful tool in this regard as it not only looks at your research productivity but also citation impact. Proposed by the US physicist J.E.Hirsch, h-index refers to the number of papers with citation number higher or equal to h. For example, you can achieve a h-index of 30 only if you have published at least 30 papers and 30 or more of your publications have received 30 citations each.
Citation counts: This is another tool to measure researcher outputs and refer to the number of times your publication has been cited by others in their published works. Citation counts can be found through citation networks or indices that enable you to find out every publication that cites or have cited your given publication. Web of Science and Scopus are common citation networks that can be used to determine citation counts. However, depending on the nature of publications included in each citation network or database, the citation numbers may vary across these networks for any given publication.
AltMetrics: AltMetrics or alternative metrics go beyond the academic system of measuring the impact of the publication output by considering a variety of online sources such as Twitter mentions, Facebook posts, blogs, mainstream news, policy documents and so forth to score its impact. AltMetrics complements the traditional metrics to understand the kind of attention and reach a given publication has received online. Through this, an author can also get an idea of who all are discussing about the publication and in which forum. As is clear, AltMetrics indicates the attention received by the publication and does not measure the quality.
Peer review evaluations: The quality and significance of a manuscript can be assessed through peer review evaluations, which are considered the best kind of scientific evaluation. Being invited to peer review also is a great indicator that you’ve been accepted as an expert in your subject matter.
Issues impacting academic influence
While academic metrics are useful, they come with limitations that can affect how influence is measured. Key concerns include:
Biases and inequalities: The existence of biases and inequalities in terms of age, gender, geographical location, academic rank and so on cannot be ruled out as issues affecting the recognition of the contribution of a researcher to a discipline.
Skewed focus: Often reliance on metrics can lead to situations where certain spheres of research tend to get lesser or more focus while critical areas maybe missed out.
Inadequate range: Metrics such as citation counts, journal impact factor, h-index and so forth are commonly used to measure academic influence within the academic system. However, academicians and researchers presently have to make their research relevant even to non-academic stakeholders such as policymakers. Not all academic metrics look at these aspects.
Less weightage to quality: Academic influence metrics generally give predominance to quantity or the large numbers of published articles and therefore does not give any indication of the quality, novelty, or larger impact of the research output. Citation counts and impact factors for example have limited use in assessing the quality of the research output.
Reliance on certain types of research: One aspect that one may have to consider is that metrics may not cover unconventional research methods that may have evolved over time, for example, art forms like theatre, drama and other artistic endeavors including research that is community based.
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