This document discusses impact factors and identification tools for scholars. It explains that impact factors and tools like ORCID, Google Scholar Citations, and ResearcherID allow scholars to track their work, make it accessible to others, and remain identifiable even if their institutional affiliation changes. Journal impact factors measure how often journals are cited, helping identify important publications. Researcher impact can be measured by citation analysis tools in Scopus and Google Scholar, including the h-index. Tracking impact and citations showcases work, allows benchmarking against peers, and helps scholars network and control their online presence. However, citation metrics do not necessarily reflect quality and may be skewed in some fields or for certain types of publications.

1. Understanding Impact Factors

2. Why Should You Use Them?
• Puts your scholarly output in one place
• Allows you to include variations in names
• Disambiguates your name from others with similar
names
• Portable if your institutional affiliation changes
• Keep track of your cited references
• Allows others to have greater access to your work

3. Identification and Profile Tools
• ORCID (Open Researcher & Contributor ID)
• Google Scholar Citations
• ResearcherID
• Scopus Author ID
– free author lookup tool only; no Scopus subscription at UTSA

4. Why Are Identification
Tools Increasingly Important?
• Publishers want to simplify workflow
• Funding organizations want to simplify grant
submissions
• Scholarly societies want easy ways to track
achievement.
• Scholars want an easy way to find
collaborators
• Institutions want to highlight and evaluate
scholarly activities.

5. Measuring Journal Impact
• Frequency with which the average article has
been cited in a particular year
• Journal Citation Reports (ISI)
• Can help you
– identify journals in which to publish
– identify journals relevant to your research
– identify the status of journals

6. Measuring Researcher Impact
• Citation Analysis
– Scopus
– Google Scholar Citations
• h-index, journals or institutions

7. Benefits of Tracking Impact
• Showcase your work
• Benchmark your work against peers
• Find and be found by potential collaborators
• Manage your publications list
• Stay in the conversation
• Take control of your online image

8. Perceived Shortcomings
• Focus on trendy work
• Citations do not equate to quality
• Some tools do not incorporate books
• Some disciplines have few journals
• Review articles, methods papers and self-
citing can skew results
• Tools don’t always go back in time very far
– Scopus only calculates citations received since 1996

9. Impact and Citation Tools
• Web of Science
• h-index
• altmetrics
• Research Gate
• Scopus

10. Discussion
Dr. George Perry, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Dr. Mary Dixson, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Thank you to University of Canberra for their assistance.
http://canberra.libguides.com/content.php?pid=157360&sid=1332339