• 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

Good practice in researcher evaluation - Recommendation for the responsible evaluation of a researcher in Finland

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.