Measuring Impact

Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is the quantitative analysis of academic output, impact, and collaboration. Information on these is provided through quantitative bibliometric indicators.

Bibliometric analysis is used to evaluate research performance by a wide range of contributors --- PhD candidates, researchers, institute directors, administrators, university policymakers --- to build research profiles and identify important patterns and trends within any domain of interest.

Due to limitations associated with bibliometrics, these measures should always be used in conjunction with qualitative evidence, such as peer review, to ensure the most complete and accurate input in answering a question.

We can help you create research performance reports for the UG research community at different levels of analysis. Don’t hesitate to contact us at rise rug.nl with your requests.

SciVal

SciVal is an analytics tool offered by Elsevier. The platform enables us to visualize research performance data, benchmark against other institutions, analyze collaborative partnerships, and uncover research trends. Scival sources its data from Scopus, Elsevier’s database of abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed literature.

While Scopus maintains that it is the largest of such databases, its coverage of certain disciplines, especially the humanities, remains limited.

Use your university credentials to log into SciVal. Don’t hesitate to contact us at rise rug.nl for support with access and use!

Alternative metrics

The shift towards open access, the rise of web-based and networked-research, the acknowledgment of the importance of the societal impact of research... All these factors of recent years have led to the development of alternative metrics.

By capturing mentions in social media, blogs, news, policy documents, but also tracking the number of downloads, online readers and bookmarks, alternative metrics --- altmetrics for short --- look beyond journal citations to give us more speedy and multifaceted feedback and a glimpse into how these aspects impact broader audiences, beyond the academic bubble.

When used together with bibliometrics, altmetrics can provide a more holistic, broader picture of impact, from academic to societal. This is not to say that it should be used without care --- metrics in general, and alternative metrics in particular, should be transparent and reproducible in order to be used in evaluations. To ensure this, RISe follows the altmetrics manifesto. If in doubt, please contact us at rise rug.nl.

Altmetric

Altmetric tracks a range of online news and social media sources to capture and report on the attention surrounding scholarly output outside of academia.

Use your university credentials to log into Altmetric. Don’t hesitate to contact us at rise rug.nl for support with access and use!

We strive to conduct our research intelligence analyses as ethically as possible, following our five core values:

1. Tailored support: we tailor our analyses to the mission of the research units.
2. Responsible expertise: we ensure the responsible and expert utilization of metrics across all practices at the UG.
3. Transparency: we openly share research assessment data and analyses.
4. Critical thinking: we thoughtfully select metrics that best serve their intended purposes and acknowledge their strengths and limitations.
5. Inclusiveness: we recognize the diverse nature of research disciplines and the varying research practices within them.

The University of Groningen recognizes the importance of using bibliometrics and altmetrics responsibly and adheres to the principles propagated in the Leiden Manifesto. The increasing sophistication of our benchmark tools allows us to do in-house analyses and provide benchmarks that can be used in various activities pertaining to the assessment of academic and societal impact, including SEP evaluations. As a result, the Policy and Strategy department of the Office of the University of Groningen has called for the prudent use of benchmarking tools and produced a set of guidelines for responsible research assessment.