• Publication activities of universities as a funding criterion (Ministry of Education 2015-)
• Research evaluation and management
• Benchmarking
• University rankings and institutional publication activity
• Recruitments

What can be measured?

• Publications: per year, per author
• Number of citations: per publication, per author, per journal
• Publication type: articles, conference papers, dissertations, monographs, reports
• Collaboration: between researchers, groups, organizations, countries

What impact can be measured?

• Individual, group, institution, subject area or geographic region
• Article level
• Publication channel methods:
  - quantitative  - journals (e.g. Impact Factor)
  - qualitative - journals, series, conferences, publishers (e.g. JuFo)

Four ways to measure impact
Source: Priem, J.; Taraborelli, D.; Groth, P.; Neylon, C. Altmetrics: a manifesto 10.2.2015

Different disciplines have markedly different publishing and citing patterns. These include:

• Publication types (e.g. articles vs. monographs)
• Choice of language; international nature of the scientific communication differs
• Publishing process (length, frequency, delay)
• Co-authoring and order of authors
• The ageing speed of publications
• Degree of popularization
• Citation practices (the numbers and attention expectancies vary)

Consequences

• Research impact measures are not comparable across disciplines.
• Quantitative methods (metrics) have to be adapted to suit the discipline in question

Leiden manifesto - Ten principles to guide research evaluation

DORA - San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

Helsinki University Library offers services relating to publication metrics. Read more here.

You can contact library's metrics team for advice and to discuss your metrics needs.