Research Impact and Academic Profile Management

University of Manitoba Research Office released the 2024-2029 Strategic Research Plan. In the Impact section of the plan, UM Research aspires improved positions in various listed categories within the World University Ranking, Center for World University Rankings, Times Higher Education ranking, and Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects Rankings. This impact will reflect the University's strengths in its 7 thematic areas of research and creative activities, focusing on maximizing public good. The goal is to create meaningful engagement outside the academy that leads to changes in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and actions that contribute to broader societal outcomes.

While the University of Manitoba is not presently a signatory to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), there is a 2019 Joint Report by the University and the Faculty Association which states a commitment to responsible use of research impact metrics in research reporting. 

The Libraries support responsible use of assessment activities using bibliometric measures for annual accreditation reporting, strategic planning and award competition. We endeavor to participate in national conversations and activities that promote institutional commitment to responsible assessment including Leiden Manifesto and CoARA. 

When used responsibly, impact measures can help you:

• Capture the diverse influences and impacts of your scholarship within and beyond academia,
• Understand who is using your scholarship and how it is being disseminated,
• Create success narratives around your scholarship,
• Support qualitative measures of research and scholarly impact such as peer-review,
• Gain insight into research trends in a specific discipline,
• Strengthen applications, such as those for grants or tenure and promotion,
• Realize the advantage of open access,
• Connect with others outside of your immediate scholarly network, including potential graduate student supervisees.

SERVICE DETAILS

Request a consultation, training or assessment reports by contacting Andrea Szwajcer or libraryresearchservices@umanitoba.ca for:

• Overview of a research area, subject or researcher profile
• Portrait of a research group or department (productivity, impact, collaborations etc)
• Responsible comparisons
• Training and presentations on research impact metrics and indicators, and persistent identifiers
• Guidance on use and interpretation of analytics tools and their metrics

TOOLS
For a full list of open and licensed resources, see RSDS - Research Impact Assessment. Note that the licensed resources include subscriptions of both the Libraries and the Office of Research Services. This list does not include tools are reserved access or access on request (i.e. Web of Science Research Intelligence and InCites). For more information on these contact Andrea Szwajcer or the Office of Research Services.

The University of Toronto Libraries has created a table with details of some common tools used to provide metrics and analyze research impact and data.

Note: UM Libraries (or the Research Office) does not subscribe to Overton. 

Good research metrics data relies on clean, disambiguated relationships between the works, and the people and organizations that are related to those works. These relationships are dependent on persistent identifiers. Many errors and miss-assignments can occur without human intervention or other systems to inform/apply accuracy. Researchers are encouraged to learn and invest some time and employ assistance in their profile; institutions are encouraged to adopt inter-operable research information management systems that assist in profile management and inform accuracy for their researchers across the ecosystem.

MANAGE YOUR IDENTITY (PROFILE): 3 STEPS

1. Create a unique online ID using ORCID to make you unique from all other authors with same last name and initials.
2. Determine what academic and professional audiences is the best fit for your scholarship and reach intentions. Create a profile on these platforms to promote your qualifications and output. If there is functionality to link to other profiles, such as ORCID, this is strongly recommended.
3. Analytic tools can be used to see who is reading, citing, mentioning, and otherwise using your work. Traditional research metrics (i.e. bibliometrics) are metrics at the author, source and item level available for mostly commercially published work. Alternative metrics, known as 'altmetrics', demonstrate various forms and categories of digital engagement, such as views, downloads, bookmarks etc.

WHY YOU SHOULD: 6 REASONS

There is an upfront time/effort commitment but you will realize these benefits:

• A strong profile, that stands independent of any institution or platform (like ORCID) and is inter-operable with other platforms, can go with you where ever and how ever you go in your career
• It is the new CV that can assist you with career promotion or job seeking
• It can resolve misspellings and/or misattributions of your work in analytic tools and provide attribution to hidden scholarly work (such as peer review)
• It helps identify you to potential collaborators or mentors working in the same area of scholarship/institutions
• It gives you a sense of how your work reaches scholars and global community
• It will save you time in updating your profile going forward