Researchers may need to establish the impact or influence of their research. This impact may include academic influence, as well as economic or societal impact on the community.

This guide describes the different ways you can:

• Assess the impact of your research
• Increase your research readership, citation count and influence

Consider establishing a Researcher Profile to promote your research and explore opportunities for collaboration.

If you want to know how to use the different metrics in your application, look at How to Use Metrics in Promotion and Grants - a self help guide.

The Charles Sturt University Research Productivity Index (staff only access) allocates points depending on type of publication. The SciMago Journal Rank also influences how many points an article receives.

The Metrics Toolkit  is a guide to understanding how different research impact metrics are calculated, what each metric means, and how to effectively use the different metrics that are available.

Research Impact Things  - The International Association of University Libraries (IATUL) has developed a self-paced training and development tool in which looks at Research Impact. While the tool is aimed at librarians, other people who are interested in research impact might find the tool useful. 

When writing your grant application it’s important to think about who is going to read it and under what conditions. You should write in a way that’s easy to understand and quickly digestible. There are a number of techniques you can use to achieve this:

1. Make the formatting work for you
2. Use simple straightforward language
3. Ensure a single voice is used throughout the application
4. Use positive language
5. Know your audience: use the funder’s language
6. Avoid jargon and acronyms
7. Tell a story
8. Use an active voice
9. Write definitive statements
10. Ensure your application is grammatically correct

For more information see: Grant Development Resources and Support

Researchers submitting grant funding applications and/or seeking academic promotion may request a Research Metrics Report from the Library. Research Metrics Reports for grant funding will be given priority during times of high demand (start of teaching session for example).

Reports for academic promotion will need a few weeks' notice. The library will provide an initial Research Metrics Report for academics, and will provide advice and training for academics to update their Report for future reuse.  The Library offers Research Metrics and Impact training in the Office of Research Services' Professional Development Calendar.

The report prepared by faculty librarians collates information about a researcher and metrics related to their research outputs, including their profiles. We pull key data from these, so it is important to keep CRO and your profiles up to date (this includes adding your media and news reports, and government publications or agency reports.)

We gather relevant data:

• CRO and ORCiD:  Important - for best results you must keep these profiles up to date.
• Scopus AuthorID, Google Scholar
• author metrics
• publication metrics from relevant sources
• publication, exhibitions and performance reviews
• Australian & international library holdings of publications.

Due to the complexity of the report, please give us 3-4 weeks for its completion. To obtain a Research Metrics Report please complete the Research Metrics Report Request form or contact a Faculty Librarian.