How to Document Scientific and Clinical Impact of Research: Six Steps to Success

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this article was to provide a brief tutorial about impact metrics and how to use these metrics to document scientific impact. In addition, examples are provided that describe possible ways to document clinical impact of research. Method: We briefly introduce traditional bibliometrics for journals (e.g., impact factor), articles (e.g., citation counts), and authors (e.g., h index). We describe alternative metrics (i.e., altmetrics) that focus on other types of dissemination metrics such as usage (e.g., downloads, reads, and views), engagement (e.g., comments, shares, and replies), and attention (e.g., Altmetric Attention Score). We also discuss how these metrics are used by others to make decisions about employment, tenure and promotion, funding, and the like. We detail six steps to documenting the scientific and clinical impact of your research. Steps include establishing an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) account, creating research profiles on academic platforms, engaging in broad dissemination activities, harvesting bibliometric and altmetric data, adding bibliometric and altmetric information to your curriculum vitae (CV), and submitting your promotion and tenure portfolio with confidence. Examples for ways in which scientific impact and clinical impact of research can be documented on your CV are provided. Results: Readers will have an introductory understanding of bibliometrics and altmetrics and how these data may be used in the evaluation of their research impact and reach. Some strategies are offered as means to increase scientific and clinical impact of research using research profiles on academic platforms. Others are suggestions for documenting scholarly activity aimed to increase clinical impact of research. Conclusions: Creating profiles with organizations that document scientific impact and engaging in the research community using less traditional methods may allow researchers to achieve a broader reach and greater clinical impact for their research. Documenting such research outputs should facilitate a researcher's career advancement.