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Scholarly Communications

The scholarly communications and publishing ecosystem, including formats of academic literature (journals, monographs, edited collections), research impact, grants, copyright, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, and non-academic publishing.

Research Impact

Measuring Research Impact

  • Researchers want to show not just that they created research but that their research had a meaningful influence on their fields of study and beyond. This is called research impact. 
  • Research impact is measured using a number of quantitative metrics (or analytics) primarily based on citations. 
  • Research impact metrics can be used to identify where to publish and to show your research productivity and success when seeking employment, tenure, promotion, and in grant applications.  
  • Common critiques of research impact metrics is that they create feedback loops by pushing researchers towards the same journals, are not effective measures of research quality, do not reflect how disciplines have different publication practices, and encourage an increase in quantity over quality in publications. These metrics can also only be as accurate as the underlying data used to measure them. 

You can find metrics for research impact at the

Image by Pabitra Kaity from Pixabay

Library Services

The University Libraries can provide training and assistance with measuring your research impact. We can help you

  • Set up persistent identifiers,
  • How different metrics might be used
  • Identify and use different tools for tracking metrics, and
  • Help you automate measuring your research impact. 

For assistance with measuring research impact, schedule an appointment with one of the following librarians and indicate what you would like covered when signing up. 

Persistent Identifiers

What is a Persistent Identifier? 

  • Persistent identifiers (PID or sometimes PI) are unique, long-lasting records to distinguish between different things.
  • PIDs may refer to a publication, a person, an organization, or others things that might want to be tracked. 
  • PIDs are designed to prevent confusion. 
    • PIDs can differentiate between two different authors named Sunita Patel.
    • A PID can identify a single journal through multiple name changes.
    • A PID makes it easier to track citations the same article done in different citation styles. 
  • Digital PIDs are also designed to be more permanent than a traditional URL, which may change and break. 
  • Many tools to track research measurement, especially at the author or article levels, can be done automatically using PIDs, simplifying the process. This makes it beneficial to know and where applicable obtain PIDs related to your research. 

ORCID, the Author Identifier

  • ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) lets every every author and researcher register for a free PID.
  • Each ORCID iD is connected to a free public record page.
    • You can track and share your publications, education and other qualifications, employment, funding, and service work on your record.
    • Your record page has a persistent URL which you can share on your university page, Google Scholar and other profiles, social media pages, business cards, and anywhere else you might want to connect someone to your research and experiences.  
  • ORCID provides an API to allow other organizations to automatically use and connect to ORCID iDs.  
    • For example, many journals allow you to include your ORCID iD when submitting an article, and the journal publication platform will automatically associate that article with your ORCID record when it is published using the API. 
    • A number of funders also allow you to submit your ORCID iD with grant applications to associate funding with your record. 
  • Use ORCID's help documentation to get started with how you can use your ORCID iD. 

Connecting ORCID to Other Researcher PIDs 

You can connect your ORCID to other author persistent identifiers, such as Scopus's Author ID and Web of Sciences' ResearcherID. When connected, updates to your ORCID profile will automatically display in those services, and updates in those services will be added to your ORCID profile.

Scopus Author Identifier

Scopus, which UofM students and faculty can use to track a lot of research impact, assigns every author a unique ID, but these are automatically generated and sometimes generate multiple IDs for the same author. Using the tool below, you can connect your ORCID iD to Scopus, improving Scopus's ability to track your research.

Web of Science ResearcherID

While UofM does not have a subscription to Clarivate Web of Science, its unique author ID, ResearcherID, can be registered for free through the Web of Science researcher profile service. You can then sync your ORCID iD to your ResearcherID in the profile editor. 

DOI, the Digital Work Identifier

  • A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a PID used for research works available online. 
  • DOIs are most commonly used for journal articles, but they can also be associated with books, book chapters, grants, research data, and many other digital research objects. 
  • DOIs make it easy to find a specific article, and many tools for measuring research impact can or will only use DOIs to identify the article.

Other Work-Based PIDs

Besides DOIs, there are some other PIDs you might come across for works:

  • ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
  • ISSN (International Standard Serial Number): for journals
  • PubMed ID