2022 Research Impact Challenge

Welcome to Day 4 of the 2022 Research Impact Challenge!

Your challenge today is to Track your Scholarly Work. Tracking your scholarly work can help you demonstrate the impact of your research by having a comprehensive understanding about which of your research outputs are being cited and/or garnering attention. Knowing how your research outputs are being used by your scholarly community and in society at large will benefit you when you are in an evaluative situation where you need to prove your impact.

Select your challenge level today based on your familiarity with tracking your work via citation alerts, article attention trackers, and completing a self-inventory. Click on your challenge level using the buttons below to be taken to your challenge. Once you finish, scroll to the bottom of the page to enter the raffle. 

To qualify for the raffle*, choose at least one challenge - entry level, advanced, or expert.

Entry: Set Up Citation Alerts Advanced: Monitor Article Attention Expert: Self-Inventory Your Work

* Five lucky participants will receive Lane Medical Library swag bags and promotion of their research by Lane Medical Library 

Citation Alerts

Would you like to be notified when your work is cited by another author? Take a few minutes today to set up citation alerts. You'll be emailed any time a new citing publication is available within the database you enabled alerts from. 

Google Scholar Citation Alerts

Did you create a google scholar profile during Day 1 of this challenge? If you have a google scholar profile set up, you can "follow" your profile to receive citation alerts. 

1. Visit scholar.google.com
2. Search for your name and click on your author profile (this will only appear if you set it up. Find setup instructions on Day 1).
3. Press the "follow" button next to your name and title.
4. You'll be prompted to select: "new articles by this author," "new citations to this author," or "new articles related to this author's research." To setup a citation alert, select "new citations to this author."

Web of Science Article Citation Alerts

Would you like to create a citation alert for a specific article? Use Web of Science's (linked below) citation alert tool to do so.  

1. Navigate to Web of Science using the link below.
2. At the top of the page, click "log in" or "register" depending on whether or not you already have an account with Clarivate. If you use  EndNote or Web of Science, you likely already have an account.
3. Search for the title of the article you would like to create an alert for. 
4. Click on the article record.
5. On the righthand side of the screen, under "citation network", click "create citation alert."
6. You'll be emailed when the publication is cited. 

Would you like to create a citation alert for specific author or group of authors? 

1. Navigate to Web of Science using the link below.
2. At the top of the page, click "log in" or "register" depending on whether or not you already have an account with Clarivate. If you use EndNote or Web of Science, you likely already have an account.
3. Switch from the "documents" tab to the "cited references" tab within the search bar. 
4. Enter your parameters (take a look at the dropdown options).
5. Run the search. Be sure to click "see results."
6. Navigate to your search history and click the bell button to create a search alert. 

Who is Talking about Your Publication?

Altmetrics, or alternative metrics, are metrics that monitor and measure the reach and impact of scholarship online interactions, complementing the traditional measures of academic success using citation impact. You can learn more about the pros and cons of using altmetrics to assess impact during challenge day five. 

In the meantime, your advanced challenge today is to download the Altmetrics bookmarklet and set an alert to quickly and easily monitor the attention your publication receives. 

1. Navigate to the Altmetrics Bookmarklet page (linked below).
2. Register using your Stanford email.
3. Drag and drop the bookmarklet button to your bookmarks bar.
4. Navigate to your publication's record on the journal website or PubMed.
5. Click on the altmetric bookmarklet button on your bookmarks bar to see what sort of attention your publication has received. 
6. An altmetric donut will appear on your screen. "Click for more details" to see the detailed view.
7. Click "alert me about new mentions" to receive email updates whenever someone mentions your research output online!

*The Altmetrics Bookmarklet is not the only tool you can use to measure alternative metrics. Contact the Research Communications Librarian if you have questions.

Self-Inventory

Your expert challenge today is to perform a self-inventory of your work. We'd like to challenge you to think more broadly about the type of scholarly work you do, and the impact that work has on academia, society, and beyond. Using metrics and altmetrics alone to measure your impact can create a limited view of research impact. There are ways in which your work likely makes an impact that cannot be measured strictly with metrics. 

The purpose of this worksheet is for you to become more aware of your scholarly labor, and to give you a framework to assess the impact your work has without looking to metrics as a measure of that impact.

To complete today's expert challenge:

1. Download the self inventory document and fill out the worksheet. 
2. Reflect on how the value you assign to your various scholarly outputs aligns with the value your field, academia as a whole, and those who evaluate you place on the same output.
3. Consider the types of academic work you marked as important to you. Do they all have an accepted way to measure and report the impact of the work? If not, think about how you can represent the importance of this academic work in your next evaluation document. 

Let Us Know You've Completed Today's Challenge