LibGuides: Support for research staff and students: Tracking publications

Tracking attention and impact

After your research output is published, you'll want to track attention to it from your peers and possibly from the general public (depending on what type of research you are working on).

Immediate impact
To track immediate impact, you can use tools such as Altmetric Explorer and Plum Analytics (via Scopus). These tools pick up attention from social media and news platforms. Your publisher may also show downloads and views of your article on the journal website.

Longer term impact
For longer term impact, tracking citations to your work can be interesting. Citations are often used as a measure of a researcher's or institution's impact and are often part of international league tables.
Track citations to your research outputs via tools such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, or Dimensions. If someone is citing you, they may be interested in your next paper.
If your output has been added to an institutional repository, such as CentAUR, you can also track downloads of your work from the repository.

Altmetric Explorer
Altmetric Explorer can help you to track the attention that research output has received following publication
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For help in interpreting and using the data in your CV or grant application, contact the Research Publications Adviser
PlumX metrics in Scopus
Find out more about PlumX metrics in the Scopus database

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Gives references to journal articles, books, conference proceedings and patents in all subjects. Also offers extensive tools to analyse results, and measure impact for articles, journals and authors.
Scopus gives references to peer-reviewed literature in all subject areas. It includes journal articles (including 'in press' items), books, conference proceedings and patents.

It is possible to search for topics, authors (including by ORCID ID), author affiliation and funders.

Extensive analytical tools also allow you to:

-analyse your search results by year, source, author, affiliation, country or territory, document type and subject area
-compare journal impact to help you decide where to publish
-see the citation impact and scholarly community engagement for an article
-analyse the citation trend for any given article, set of results or for a list of author documents
-view an author profile to analyse and track an individual's citation history

Help and guidance
Scopus Quick Reference Guide (PDF)
Tutorial of creating alerts
Scopus learn & support site
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Use to search across a number of databases covering a range of subject areas. Provides references to journal articles, books, conference papers, patents, research data and other materials.
Web of Science gives access to a range of databases which can be searched individually or simultaneously:

-BIOSIS Previews - biological sciences
-Current Contents Connect
-Data Citation Index - research data from international repositories
-Derwent Innovations Index - patents in engineering
-FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts)
-Medline - biomedical sciences
-Web of Science Core Collection - made up of the Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences Citation Indexes, plus a number of other databases

The cross-search also includes open access journals and open archive repositories.

Also available via Web of Science:

-JCR (Journal Citation Reports)

Help and guidance
Web of Science Training Portal

Dimensions
Dimensions bibliographic database

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Set up a Google Scholar profile to publicise your research outputs and obtain citation counts.
It is unclear which publishers are included in Google Scholar, so it shouldn't be used as your only source for a comprehensive literature search. For references to reliable, academic sources search our Summon discovery service or databases covering your subject.

Link to our full-text
You can set your preferences on Google Scholar to show links to full-text articles in all of our e-journals.

1) Click on the three lines on the top left of the home screen.
2) Select 'Settings'.
3) Select 'Library Links' on the left of the screen.
4) In the search box type 'Reading' and select the 'Reading University Library - Full-Text @ Reading' option.
5) Save your settings.

When you do a search, look for a 'Full-Text @ Reading' link to the right of references in your results list. This indicates that we have a subscription which will give you access to the article. Click on this link to access the full-text.

If the 'Full-text @ Reading' link does not appear next to a reference it indicates that it isn't covered by our subscriptions and you probably won't be able to access the article.

If you are off-campus you will need to login to access the articles. You will usually be prompted to login as soon as you click on the link to the article. If this doesn't happen you will need to look for an institutional or Shibboleth login link once you reach the journal's website. For more guidance see Accessing e-journals.

Google Scholar Button
Google have produced a plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Safari which allows you to easily search for and cite articles. Highlight the title of an article in the page you are reading and then click the Scholar button and it will search for the article on Google Scholar in a pop up window. To get a formatted reference for a search result press the quote button next to it and the reference will appear in three different styles.

To make the most of this tool set up the University of Reading as a 'Library Link' using the instructions above.

CentAUR
Find out how many times your output has been downloaded from the CentAUR repository (if you have a full text uploaded),

Bibliometrics

What are bibliometrics?

In very simple terms, bibliometrics is a term used for data about publications

The first use of bibliometrics involved the collecting of data on scientific articles and publications, classified by authors, institutions, fields, country etc in order to give an indicator of "productivity" for academic research. Subsequently more sophisticated techniques based on citations in articles were developed.

Bibliometric analysis uses such data to measure the "output" of individuals, research teams, institutions etc. Bibliometrics are increasingly being used to assess the "impact" of research in order the evaluate and quantify it. There are many tools available to help authors assess the impact of their publications and provide data for the UK Higher Education's Research Excellence Framework (REF) (See link below).

REF 2021 website
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions.

For more information on using bibliometrics to track the impact and reach of research outputs, see the University of Reading 'Boost your academic profile' guide below.

Boost your academic profile
A guide for University of Reading researchers on how to boost your academic profile. This is extended advice based on the small booklet issued to researchers in 2018
Research Publications Adviser (Library)
Expert advice on research publications and bibliometrics.

SciVal This link opens in a new window
SciVal is an advanced bibliometric database that uses data from Scopus to assess the research performance of 7,500 research institutions and 220 nations worldwide.

Before using this resource you must register for an Elsevier account and create your own username and password.
Produced by Elsevier it uses bibliometric information from the Scopus database from 1996 onwards. By looking at citation data, it is possible to visualise the overall research performance of groups or institutions, perform benchmarking across groups and institutions and investigate possible collaborative partnerships. SciVal offers a broad range of metrics such as productivity, citation impact, collaboration, disciplinarity, snowball metrics and power metrics.

Use SciVal to:

create data sets for groups of researchers that can represent actual research teams, departments, schools or international collaboration groups;
create publication sets based on a particular affiliation or a grant award;
create groups of publication sets to represent those that might be submitted to national evaluations, e.g. the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF);
use a range of metrics to evaluate different aspects of research performance across different disciplines.

Help and guidance
How to use the Overview module
How to use the Benchmarking module
SciVal metrics guidebook
SciVal usage guidebook
Snowball metrics recipe book

For individual help and advice on using SciVal, contact Karen Rowlett, Research Publications Adviser.

Snowball metrics
A set of research metrics developed by research-active universities world-wide.

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Gives references to journal articles, books, conference proceedings and patents in all subjects. Also offers extensive tools to analyse results, and measure impact for articles, journals and authors.
Scopus gives references to peer-reviewed literature in all subject areas. It includes journal articles (including 'in press' items), books, conference proceedings and patents.

It is possible to search for topics, authors (including by ORCID ID), author affiliation and funders.

Extensive analytical tools also allow you to:

-analyse your search results by year, source, author, affiliation, country or territory, document type and subject area
-compare journal impact to help you decide where to publish
-see the citation impact and scholarly community engagement for an article
-analyse the citation trend for any given article, set of results or for a list of author documents
-view an author profile to analyse and track an individual's citation history

Help and guidance
Scopus Quick Reference Guide (PDF)
Tutorial of creating alerts
Scopus learn & support site

Publish or Perish Software
A free bibliometrics tool to analyse citations

JCR (Journal Citation Reports) This link opens in a new window
Gives impact factors and other evaluative information for journals in the sciences and social sciences.
- Science and technology (over 7,350 leading journals covered)
- Social sciences (over 2,240 leading journals covered)
Journal evaluation - showing you the highest impact journals, most frequently used journals, hottest journals, and the largest journals.

Help and guidance
JCR quick reference card (PDF)
JCR guide
JCR training videos
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Use to search across a number of databases covering a range of subject areas. Provides references to journal articles, books, conference papers, patents, research data and other materials.
Web of Science gives access to a range of databases which can be searched individually or simultaneously:

-BIOSIS Previews - biological sciences
-Current Contents Connect
-Data Citation Index - research data from international repositories
-Derwent Innovations Index - patents in engineering
-FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts)
-Medline - biomedical sciences
-Web of Science Core Collection - made up of the Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences Citation Indexes, plus a number of other databases

The cross-search also includes open access journals and open archive repositories.

Also available via Web of Science:

-JCR (Journal Citation Reports)

Help and guidance
Web of Science Training Portal