Research metrics

Research metrics provide one way to measure the uptake of your work. They provide evidence of your performance in your academic field, and can help describe your contribution and value to the university, the economy and society.

Use metrics to:

provide supporting evidence for research grants and academic promotions
determine your publishing strategy (for example, where you choose to publish)
benchmark and assess your research performance against peers
validate your work by demonstrating the range of uptake by others
build a profile to progress your career.

You can also use metrics to help identify key researchers and research trends in your field.

Understanding the impact of your research to society requires a different approach.

Research Impact Hub (staff only)

Leading industry, protecting the environment, changing policy and practice, Griffith research projects with real and measurable impact make a better world.

Explore research projects

Support grants and promotions

Use research metrics to support your claims in grant and promotion applications.

Commonly used metrics include:

number of publications
career citation count
citations per publication
percentage of publications cited
h-index.

Other measures include:

your reach, both interdisciplinary and international
comparison with other articles/publications in the same discipline
engagement with your research by others on social media
your influence on public policy.

Find metrics

The best tool is often discipline and research output-dependent.

I want to find

Find definitions, use cases, and limitations for various metrics.

Explore the Metrics Toolkit

Use metrics responsibly

It is important to combine a variety of metrics with qualitative evidence to demonstrate your research value. Metrics should be used critically and cannot replace the informed judgement of peers.

Evidence can take many forms and will be highly dependent on the aims and outcomes of an individual research project.

The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics outlines ten principles to guide research evaluation. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment similarly outlines a range of issues to keep in mind when using research metrics.

Write it up

Create a narrative to give context to your research metrics. A coherent story conveys the reach of your research better than numbers alone.

For example:

Since 2002, Dr. ABC has published 48 peer‐reviewed manuscripts with 92 unique coauthors, representing 86 institutions, including two authorship groups from eight countries. Dr. ABC is first author on 21 manuscripts and sole author of five works. The manuscripts have been published in 28 journals representing 15 research areas including hematology, pathology, emergency medicine, cardiovascular cardiology, and toxicology. To date, Dr. ABC's manuscripts have been cited over 1,000 times by 698 other manuscripts by authors from 18 countries in five languages. Each one of Dr. ABC's manuscripts has at least five citations.

Source: Carpenter CR, Cone DC and Sarli CC (2014) 'Using publication metrics to highlight academic productivity and research impact', Academic Emergency Medicine, 21(10):1160-1172, doi:10.1111/acem.12482

Remember

Check your research funder’s instructions and requirements
Use a graph or visualisation to help tell your story
Highlight your career progression and trajectory
Update data regularly
Include the retrieval date and the data source: “Scopus, 30/06/2020…”
Use one data source consistently: “Based on Scopus data Dr ABC’s metrics are…”
Use metrics to support your narrative, not to drive it
Avoid a combination of sources: “With 56 publications in Google Scholar and an H-Index of 10, the FWCI (Scopus) for my top paper is…”

Examples of using metrics to tell your research story

Get metrics from these library databases to create statements that support your research narrative. Modify these examples to suit your needs.

Navigate to your author profile to find basic metrics and visualisations.
Use the Analyze Results feature to explore who is citing your work.
Find article metrics by viewing the details of individual articles.

Research output overview

Since 2006, Dr Lee has published 34 peer‐reviewed manuscripts with co-authors from 12 different countries, representing 52 institutions.
Dr Perez has published 62 peer-reviewed manuscripts during her 15 year career. These outputs have been produced through varied funding sources, including the CSIRO and the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.
A/Prof Patel has co-authored 25 peer-reviewed conference papers, including papers presented at prestigious, discipline-relevant conferences such as those organised by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Dr Walker’s research has a broad reach and audience, demonstrated by it having been cited by documents across diverse subject areas including business, medicine and environmental science.

Field weighted citation impact ( FWCI )

My 2019 systematic review on the effectiveness of equine-assisted psychotherapy for supporting at-risk youth has an FWCI of 2.05, meaning it has been cited approximately two times more than expected according to the global average.
With an FWCI of 1.42, this paper is performing above average when compared to similar papers.

Navigate to your author profile to find basic metrics and visualisations.
Use the Analyze Results feature to explore who is citing your work.
View individual article metrics on your author Beamplot by hovering over each document.
Claim your author profile for best results.

Research output overview

Dr Rivera's documents have been published in 17 journals representing 5 unique research areas including Business & Economics, Sport Sciences and Sociology.
To date, Dr Chan’s peer-reviewed research outputs (n=32) have been cited 459 times by authors from 58 countries and in three languages.
To date, A/Prof Lee’s published research outputs (n=63) have been cited 658 times by authors affiliated with key industry bodies such as the Australian Institute of Sport and Tennis Australia.

Citation percentiles

My 2017 paper on decision-making in sport has been cited 33 times, placing it in the 92nd percentile, compared to similar papers.
My career publications (n=34) are performing well above average in terms of citations accrued, with an overall median citation percentile of 75.

Find metrics such as percentiles (% of publications in top 10%) and normalized indicators (CNCI) that show performance relative to world averages or baselines.
Explore article metrics for all your documents in Web of Science.

Research output overview

The collective CNCI of A/Prof Fisher’s papers is 1.70, meaning this research is performing notably above the global average based on citations accrued.
More than a quarter (26.9%, n=14) of Prof Lee’s documents are ranked in the top 10% most cited publications when compared to similar publications.
More than half (51.8%, n=41) of A/Prof Nguyen’s documents include an international collaboration.

Article metrics

With a CNCI of 2.38, Dr Sharpe’s article on algal blooms in the Murray-Darling Basin is performing more than two times better than the global average based on citations accrued.
This paper is performing in the top 10% of peer papers based on accrued citations.

Connect your author profile.
Use the Overview and Benchmarking modules to analyse your research outputs.
Find normalised indicators (for example, FWCI ) to show performance relative to world averages.

Research output overview

My chemistry papers (n=53) published between 2012-2021 have a mean FWCI of 2.24, meaning that this research is performing two times better than the global average based on citations accrued.
More than two-thirds (68.9%) of my peer reviewed documents published between 2012-2021 (n=37) involve international collaboration.
More than a quarter (26.8%), of Professor Fischer’s peer reviewed documents from 2012-2021 (n=47) were published in journals which rank in the top 10% of their field, based on the SCImago Journal Rank.