While there are many forms of research output across most disciplines journal articles remain the most common form of research output, and often the default for measuring research impact. Article-level metrics provide a snapshot of how an individual article is being discussed, shared, and used. Metrics can be drawn from many different places and can be traditional, citation-based metrics, or other measures and metrics such as altmetrics.
If an article has a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), tracking its impact across various platforms will be easier. If you cite an article then using a DOI in that citation will help others track the impact of the research.
Many publishers and databases have their metrics platforms and ways of measuring article-level impact, but these often only capture citations within their own database.
Larger, cross-disciplinary indexes from which citation counts can be accessed include Google Scholar, Dimensions, and Scopus.
Scopus and SciVal also provide a Field Weighted Citation Index (FWCI) which compares the citations an article has to articles published in the same year, the same type of article (i.e. review articles are compared with other review articles), and with other articles in the same discipline.
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research.
Access research performance of thousands of research institutions and associated researchers to visualise research performance, benchmark relative to peers, develop strategic partnerships, identify and analyse research trends.
A search tool which allows searches across many disciplines and sources. By accessing Google Scholar from this site, any search results which are part of a Library subscription will be indicated by the Find@Waikato link.
There are many other ways of measuring article impact. One of these is citations in Policy Documents. Overton is a database that captures where articles have been mentioned or cited in policy documents from Government entities, Intergovernmental Organisations, Think Tanks:
Overton is a searchable index of global policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers. Explore policy documents citing research from the University of Waikato, or search for specific authors or articles that have been cited in policy documents.
Almetrics, or alternative metrics, capture where research has been used, mentioned or cited outside of academic research. Note: Almetrics scores often include traditional citations as part of their calculations, but they also include much more. PlumX metrics, which can be accessed in Scopus, produces a visualisation based on 5 categories - Usage (e.g. clicks, downloads, views, library holdings), Captures (e.g. bookmarks, code forks, favourites, watchers), Mentions (e.g. blog posts, reviews, news media), Social Media (e.g. shares, likes, comments on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Figshare) as well as Citations (both traditional academic citations and policy and clinical citations). Similar data can be viewed through the Altmetric Bookmarklet or via the free version of Dimensions (which requires registration to access).
For assistance, reach out to the Open Research Team at library@waikato.ac.nz.