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Researchers across disciplines are increasingly being asked to demonstrate the impact of their work, whether it be for promotion and tenure, grants, or accreditation. Raising the visibility of a researcher’s work through curated online profiles, open access publishing, and public engagement can boost their influence. Measuring the value of research and scholarship is a difficult task, and research metrics are often used as quantifiers. Impact is best understood as a story, and intentional use of metrics can help tell pieces of it. The UW-Madison Libraries are here to help researchers build visibility and effectively assess the impact of their scholarship.
Campus Libraries can help groups of any size – from research teams to departments to centers – examine their research impact. We provide bibliography and citation analysis, grant acknowledgement and compliance audits, research topics and trends surveys, and other customized reports.
Researcher profiles link an individual with their research outputs, funding, and affiliations. Some profiles, like ORCID, require registration while others are generated within literature databases, but all allow for manual management. The Libraries can help researchers build comprehensive profiles to showcase their work.
Impact metrics can be used to better understand the research landscape and an individual’s or group’s position in it. Citation analysis, social sharing, and other bibliometrics trace the influence of research over time. Metrics are often flawed, and can exacerbate inequities. We can help you calculate your personal metrics and apply them in an ethical, practical way.
Scholarly publishing is one of the main ways researchers share their work. Finding an appropriate journal or a reputable publisher can be difficult, and the various publishing options, including open access, can be confusing. We can help you navigate the publishing landscape within different disciplines.
The larger vision for demonstrating the impact and societal benefit of one’s research–and engaging with a larger, diverse audience for that information–has entered the discourse of other funding agencies as well as those who are invested in the outreach mission of their public universities. The Libraries can help researchers with best practices for planning, documenting, and assessing broader impacts.