Faculty Workshop Series: Assess Research Impact

Here are a few suggestions for ways to ensure your article is highly downloaded PRIOR to submission:

1. Choose a descriptive title. Write a clear title that includes the most important keywords and demonstrates the significance of your research.
2. Use appropriate keywords. Think of every likely angle that someone would search on regarding your research topic, and make sure that those angles are covered with your keywords.
3. Write an informative abstract. Include keywords and key phrases in your abstract in order to optimize your article for search engines and encourage readers to click through to the full article.

Key Takeaways:

• Your title should include the key terms from your research.
• Choose an intelligent list of words and phrases for the keyword section.
• Use those keywords naturally within your abstract.

Source: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. (n.d.). How to... ensure your article is highly downloaded: what you can do PRIOR to submission. Retrieved from http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/authors/guides/promote/optimize1.htm

Here are a few suggestions for how to maximize the impact of your research:

Ensure your research makes an impact:

1. Take advantage of free author eprints. If you receive free eprints with the publication of your article, be sure to share these eprints with colleagues and friends. Some popular strategies for distribution of eprints include adding links to your email signatures, sending direct article links to contacts, and/or posting links on social media.
2. Add your article, or the journal, to your students' reading lists as essential reading.
3. Add article links to personal web pages or institutional faculty profiles. The more links you post on the Internet, from a range of websites, the higher it will appear within search engine results.
4. Check whether the library has a subscription to the journal. If not, recommend a subscription to a librarian.
5. Register for a unique ORCID author identifier. Then add the details of your article to your profile.
6. If you've published a book, be sure to ask the publisher how your work will be promoted so that it reaches its intended audience. Also ask the publisher how you will be supported as an advocate for your book.

Source: Taylor & Francis Group. (2014). Promote your article Retrieved from http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/beyondpublication/promotearticle.asp

Get Noticed: Promote your article for maximum impact:

1. Preparing your article. Choose the right journal, based on its scope. Then optimize your article for SEO discovery by including a great abstract, relevant keywords, and appropriate section titles and subheadings.
2. Publishing your article. Publishers offer several features that will help improve the visibility of your article. These include DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) that always link to the latest available version of your article and Table of Contents e-alerts for subscribers. Some publishers, such as Elsevier, also highlight top articles from the past 12 months, which may be freely available to any interested readers.
3. Promoting your article. In addition to standards such as conference presentations and posters, consider connecting with others on social networking sites and using institutional communication channels, such as press releases, to announce your research.
4. Monitoring your article. Some publishers offer research dashboards, which present data on who is accessing your article, to their authors. Altmetrics also allow you to track and analyze the online activity around your article.

Source: Elsevier. (2015, April 20). Promoting your article for maximum impact — It's as easy as 1, 2, 3 (... and 4!) Retrieved from http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/articles/2015-04/promoting-your-article-maximum-impact-it-s-easy-1-2-3-and-4

The tools shown in the video below will help you make sure your research is properly attributed and credited to you.

ORCID and Scopus: Manage your author profile (video run time: 5:15)

Note: This content may be best viewed in the Google Chrome browser. If you are unable to view the video, please copy the URL for this web page from the browser address bar, and then paste it into the Chrome browser.

Most publishers offer free alert services that will notify you when your article has been cited. Here are a couple publishers who offer these services.

Below are additional resources that highlight various aspects of bibliometrics and altmetrics.

• Bornmann, L. (2014). Do altmetrics point to the broader impact of research? An overview of benefits and disadvantages of altmetrics. Journal of Informetrics, 8(4), 895-903. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2014.09.005
• Bornmann, L. (2014). Validity of altmetrics data for measuring societal impact: A study using data from Altmetric and F1000Prime. Journal of Informetrics, 8(4), 935-950. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2014.09.007
• Bouyssou, D., & Marchant, T. (2014). An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices. Journal of Informetrics, 8(3), 449-477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2014.03.001
• Egghe, L. (2014). Impact coverage of the success-index. Journal of Informetrics, 8(2), 384-389. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2014.01.005
• Tattersall, A. (Ed.). (2016). Altmetrics: A practical guide for librarians, researchers and academics. London, UK: Facet Publishing.
• Thomson Reuters. (2008). Using bibliometrics: A guide to evaluating research performance with citation data. http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/m/pdfs/325133_thomson.pdf

A handful of publishers have begun to incorporate altmetrics - i.e. mentions and shares of research output across traditional and social media outlets - into their platforms. These metrics can help you present a broader impact of your research, such as a Twitter conversation generated from a paper presentation at a conference or the number of readers who have saved your article for reading or discussion on Mendeley. Below are links to details on how some publishers are presenting altmetrics to scholarly audiences.