Understanding research metrics

• What’s a journal Impact Factor?
• What’s a researcher’s h-index?
• What’s an Altmetric score and how is it calculated?
• How should I use this to assess a journal or to advise colleagues on the right journal to publish in?

Research metrics are a thorny and constantly evolving area, and a topic librarians are often asked to give advice and guidance on (see skills for scholarly communication from Cambridge University Library for more).

To support you in this, we’ve put together two resources designed to help researchers understand how they can use research metrics when they’re choosing a journal to submit to and assessing the impact of their own work:

• Understanding journal metrics: how these data can help you choose a journal to submit to
• How to measure research impact

In addition, the understanding research metrics guide on our Editor Resources site examines many of the common metrics in more detail, including an overview of journal ranking lists and a popular introduction to the Emerging Sources Citation Index.