Measuring Research Impact: Pukapuka & Wāhanga Pukapuka | Books & Book Chapters

Books and book chapters contribute to the advancement of knowledge across a wide range of disciplines. Assessing the impact of books can be challenging and often requires a number of quantitative and qualitative factors to be weaved together. Some of the questions you may wish to consider include: 

• Has the book received any prizes or nominations?
• How many copies of the book have been sold?
• Has the book or chapter been reviewed?
• Is the book available in more than one format e.g. electronic and print? 
• Has there been more than one edition of the book? i.e. has it been reprinted? 
• Has the book been translated into more than one language?
• Has the book been used as a textbook in a University or Polytechnic course? 
• Is the book held in libraries domestically and internationally?
• Has the author been invited to talk on a topic related to the book? 

Books are not often indexed in databases and most citation indices focus on articles. To determine your book's influence you may need to explore a range of sources, including: 

• Citations found through:
  • Google Scholar
  • Google Books
  • PsycINFO
  • Scopus 
  • JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive
  • Index New Zealand
  • Project MUSE
• The number of libraries holding the book, including:
  • Te Puna (New Zealand)
  • Worldcat (international) 
• The number of downloads, plus user locations in Research Commons 
• Book Reviews:
  • Our databases
  • Google Books
  • Goodreads
• Where has the book been used? Is it in a Waikato Reading List or other universities' reading lists
• Is it in e-book format as well as in print?

You may also consider publisher prestige, sales figures, news coverage, Social media responses, retweets, usage on Academia.edu and ResearchGate, and numbers of editions. Note the "appropriate use" comments about these measures in the Metrics Toolkit.