Bibliometrics & Responsible Research Evaluation: Metrics for your CV

It is extremely difficult to “measure” the impact of an individual researcher or a research group on the discipline or society. However, bibliometrics can help to broadly inform evaluation alongside qualitative, expert assessment and review.

Remember to use metrics responsibly - do not use journal metrics to demonstrate the impact of your research, and if you use quantitative measures, do not use them in isolation and without context. 

Consider highlighting a shortlist of your most "impactful" outputs, and providing evidence of who has benefited from them and how.

• Use a standardised institutional affiliation and address e.g. University College Dublin, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Dublin, Ireland
   
• Collaborate with researchers in other institutions
   
• Publish Open Access or deposit your publication in Research Repository UCD. 
   
• Use ASEO (academic search engine optimisation) by carefully selecting title and keywords for your publication
   
• Register for an ORCID to improve identifiability in databases
   
• Present preliminary research findings at meetings and conferences
   
• Join academic social networking sites, e.g. Humanities Commons
   
• Consider communicating information about your research via Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn (if relevant to industry), podcasts or other social media channels

Metrics for your CV

• Citations per publication 
• Field-weighted citation impact per publication (UCD KPI)
• Papers authored with international collaborations (UCD KPI)

In light of the responsible metrics movement, the above metrics are still appropriate to include in a CV.

Metrics to use with care 

• Journal Impact Factor
• h-index and h5-index
• Total number of citations
• Field weighted citation per author (only recommended for use with a publication output of 100 items or more)

These metrics are now seen as a less appropriate way to reflect quality and impact of research. Many funders will explicitly state that they may not be used in applications.

For definitions of each of the above metrics visit our Metrics Defined page.

Research Profiles improve Accuracy of Metrics

• UCD RMS Profile

Ensure your profile has all of your publications. See the full guide on setting up your RMS Profiles from UCD Research.

• ORCID

Ensure you have created an ORCID profile and that this is linked to your UCD RMS Profile. If you go to Settings - ORCID Settings in the UCD RMS Profile and allow read/write access to UCD, then any publications listed in your UCD RMS Profile will automatically be updated to your ORCID profile. Having an up-to-date ORCID profile will help the databases to list all of your publications. See our ORCID guide for details.

• Author Profiles

Ensure your profile in Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar are up-to-date with all your details and publications. Merge any duplicate profiles. If all of your publications are not captured in these tools, then the research metrics calculated will not be accurate and may be an under-estimation. Login to each database or website to review and edit your profile. For Web of Science and Scopus you will need to login with your UCD Connect details, then create a personal account if you have not already done so.

• Set up citation alerts for your publications in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar
   
• Sign up on scholarly networking sites, list your publications there and track how often they have been viewed and who is following you.
   
• Use alternative metrics (Altmetrics) to track the impact of your research. Downloads, mentions in mainstream and social media, and mentions in policy documents can be broad indicators of the attention your research is receiving among certain audiences