Impact in different contexts
A common way to measure scholarly impact is by using citation-based indicators. You can find citations for individual publications in specialised citation databases such as Web of Science or Scopus.
There are also ways to analyse impact beyond academia. Using alternative data such as social media, news articles, blogs and policy documents, it is possible to see how scholarly publications are discussed, used, linked and downloaded beyond a strictly scholarly context.
Factors that affect citations
Publications in different subject areas have different conditions for aggregating citations. Degree of co-authorship, choice of language, and publication volume are examples of factors that can affect citations.
Small units of analysis provide less valuable guidance for bibliometric indicators. Therefore, it is not in line with best practice to present such indicators on an individual basis without significant data validation. Umeå University is a member of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), which advocates the responsible use of quantitative metrics when evaluating research.
Read the news article “Umeå University joins CoARA” (umu.se)
Journal impact
To investigate the impact of journals, you can access the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Scopus Sources tools via Web of Science and Scopus. These may be of interest when choosing which journal to publish in.
Read more about choosing a publishing channel
See impact and publication patterns in Scival
As an employee, you have access to Elsevier’s bibliometrics analysis tool, Scival. The tool is based on the Scopus database, which contains published research data from more than 20,000 research institutions in over 230 countries worldwide. For example, Scival allows you to compare countries, universities and individuals based on a variety of indicators (normalised citation rate, collaboration rate, subject specialisation, etc.). In Scival, you can export data and create reports that visualise your analyses.
View your impact in Altmetric Explorer
As an employee of Umeå University, you have (until late 2025) access to the Altmetric Explorer tool. The tool can provide interesting information about how your scholarly articles are being used to argue different positions on platforms such as X, or how they are being implemented in policy-related documents and clinical guidelines from various organisations for example.
Provide accurate information in your publications
It is important that your publications have accurate information so that they can be picked up in bibliometric analyses and evaluations. Use a unique author ID to link the publications to you as a person. Also, make sure you state your affiliation to Umeå University correctly.
State your affiliation correctly
ORCID and other researcher IDs help keep track of your publications.
Use an author ID
ORCID and other author IDs help keep track of your publications.
