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There are various tools available to help you keep track of where your research is being picked up and used. Using them, you might identify where your work is having an impact.

Academic Impact

Bibliometrics

You can track and quantify the contribution that your research makes to academic advances, across and within disciplines, by referencing citations data.

There are many tools available for tracking citations, including Scopus and Web of Science. Guidance on how to use these tools is available through University of Galway Library.

SciVal is a particularly useful tool for monitoring your academic impact by helping you to visualise research impact, benchmark impact relative to peers, find research partners, create customisable reports, and identify and analyse emerging research trends.

University of Galway has a number of research tools to assist the research community, see here.

Using metrics responsibly 

There are a number of frameworks calling for a significant change in research asessment.

Many institutions are signing Responsible Metrics statements such as the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden Manifesto for research metrics or The Metric Tide that commit to current good practice and act as a guide for future activities.

University of Galway are signatories to the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) agreement. Based on 10 commitments, the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment sets a shared direction for changes in assessment practices for research, researchers and research performing organisations, with the overarching goal to maximise the quality and impact of research.

University of Galway has issued its Statement on the Responsible Use of Research Metrics and University of Galway. This Statement confirms that University of Galway is committed to the further development and implementation of responsible, fair and transparent research assessment processes and the adoption of the principles of responsible metrics.

Societal and Economic Impact

Tracking societal and economic impact is a little more challenging than tracking academic impact. However, you can use various techniques to work out where you research is being used outside of academia:

  • Tracking the attention your research outputs generate beyond readership of academic journals using Altmetrics.
  • Tracking downloads of your research outputs stored in institutional repositories.
  • Using website analytics to analyse the attention that your research website receives
  • Using Impact Tracking Templates to plan and track progress against your impact goals

However, it’s important to remember that these techniques do not give you insights into impact itself. Rather, they alert you to where your research is being picked up, which may help you to identify knock-on impacts.

  • Researcher Impact Framework (RIF) - Developed by Dr Giovanna Lima and Sarah Bowman (Trinity College Dublin), RIF provides a structure for crafting audience-focused, evidence-based impact narratives that connect scholarly activities, reach, use, and relevance data to scientific and societal outcomes.

    • Altmetrics

    Altmetric Explorer is a database that allows you to view the widespread attention and potential impact your research is receiving online. You can use Altmetric Explorer to learn:

    • Where your research is referenced by policy and patent documents
    • Where your research is being picked up by national and international news outlets
    • Where engagement with research in your field is happening online
    • Who is talking about your research
    • Which journals are publishing research that receive the most online attention

    Find out more about Altmetrics by visiting the University of Galway library guide.

    Downloads

    You can also track online attention through download and viewing statistics from repositories and social networking sites, such as Aran, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and Linkedin.

    Website analytics

    If you have a dedicated site for your research project, web analytics can give useful insights on the audience for your work. For example, you can track and report your website traffic using Google Analytics – a free web analytics tool that helps you understand how visitors are engaging with your website. Get the basic tracking code at the Google Analytics website.

    Impact Tracking Template

    Professor Mark Reed from Newcastle University has designed a useful Impact Tracking Template. This tool helps you track how different activities contribute to meeting your impact goals.

    Here’s how it works: 

    • Enter your impact goals and activities from your Impact Planning Canvas.
    • Identify indicators that will easily tell you if your activities are working or not, and make sure you’ve got quick and easy ways of measuring your indicators  
    • Assess your progress using the traffic light system and make any comments about the reasons for your assessment and what you plan to do
    • Do the same with indicators that will tell you if you are making progress towards your impact goals.

    Training opportunities

    At University of Galway, we offer various workshops and seminars:

    Our Research Impact Seminar Series is an opportunity to hear from national and international research impact experts who will share and discuss best practices around the world on impact related topics.

    To find out about other workshops and seminars, please visit our SharePoint site.

    Click here to return to the Main Page.

    Explore our toolkit to learn how to Plan, Capture, Communicate and Monitor your impact.

    Please improve this toolkit by sharing tools and other resources you find useful: email Áine Mhic Thaidhg, Research Impact Officer.

    The development of this toolkit was led by UCD, with funding from the HEA, and members of a Research Impact Working Group. Further information available here.