Qui bono is a Latin phrase which means "who benefits" and it encapsulates exactly what research impact is. Research impact is defined by various different groups as basically being who research benefits. This could be society, individuals, or basically just anyone who consumes research output for any given purpose.
Research metrics are a way of measuring that impact on the wider community, individual, and institutional level. So, when you hear someone talking about metrics what they're really saying is that they're using statistical methods to analyze the research output of a given institution, authors, or author. We have already discussed in this guide some of the most common metrics, and where to find them in citation databases, but how are these used in the real world? Below are some real world use cases...
There are over a hundred ranking agencies who rank colleges and universities world-wide. For this example we will only be looking at one of them, but it should be noted that every single agency uses a different formula for calculating their rankings. TImes Higher Ed (THE) is often considered the most prestigious of the rankings, and it uses citations for a chunk of its calculation.
As you can see above, the citation impact of papers published within the last five years are weighted at 15% of an institutions ranking. This is a significant chunk of the total, and it is mirrored by many other ranking agencies. While just one of a number of ways in which metrics can be used, this is one of the most significant as it has real world impact in how decision makers, future students, and faculty make decisions about institutions.
Metrics can be used in the construction of literature reviews by scholars and researchers in a few ways. The first is the use of paper citations as a measure of influence. What this means is the number of citations a paper has, the more it can be presumed to be influential either in a positive or negative way.
For a guided tutorial on how to use metrics in literature reviews in Scopus click here.
For a guide through the production of literature reviews using Web of Science, click here.
The last real world use case of metrics is the discovery of research trends. Emerging trends can be discovered in Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar by looking at metrics like citation count and journal impact factor. For more information on both look at the home page of this guide.
By using these two metrics one can filter articles in a way which allow for the discovery of new trends in research.