Research Metrics Services

The University Libraries provides research metrics support to CMU students, researchers, and staff. Research metrics is the measurement of the impact of published research based on various metrics. Research metrics support includes analyses of your work's overall impact, analysis of your department's research impact, track your research work in social media, enhance the visibility of your research, and citation mapping. Additional information can be found in our Measuring Your Research Impact guide.

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How can metrics be useful to you?

Metrics can be useful for you:

• To raise your research profile or that of your research group or institute.
• To demonstrate your impact in a quantifiable way, e.g., for tenure evaluations, grant applications, annual reports, and personal (HR) evaluations.
• To identify how your research is being cited and used by scientific and societal partners and policymakers.
• To find new research partners and collaborators.

How can the Libraries help?

Librarians involved in research impact analysis services can provide support in many ways. For example, we can:

• Provide guidance on which tool will best suit your analysis goals.
• Recommend resources and methods to perform Author level research analysis.
• Recommend resources and methods to perform article-level research analysis.
• Design and help in department-level research analysis.
• Provide guidance and training on how to use citation analysis tools.
• Assist in the use of subject specific citation databases.
• Assist in using journal-level metrics such as Journal Ranking, Journal Impact Factors, and Eigenfactor.
• Assist in the use of specific Journal Ranking Tools.
• Aid in understanding social and alternative metrics such as Altmetrics, Kudos.
• Offer guidance on performing comprehensive research metrics analysis.
• Offer strategy for research benchmarking analysis with other departments/institutes.

Depending on the involvement level, librarians can serve as consultants or collaborators on your research impact analysis project.

As a consultant on your project, we can provide:

• Background information on research metrics tools.
• Guidance on how to utilize research metrics databases and download information.
• Recommendations about analysis tools for author level impact, article-level impact, journal impact, and institutional impact.
• Benchmarking analysis.
• Assistance in visualizing research impact analysis.

Research Information Management Services (RIMS) brings together information about scholarship, creative practices, and funded research endeavors, as well as teaching, service, awards, and leadership accomplishments.