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Library Library

Visualising Impact of Research

Smart Tools: Scival, Essential Science Indicators, Altmetric Explorer and UvA-view

All research has impact: sometimes the impact is on society in general and sometimes on a smaller community of peers. Measuring the impact of research is not only important for you as a researcher, but also for funding agencies.
On this page:

Support tools can provide insights into important patterns and trends within research areas and can help you visualize data in smart ways to your benefit, helping you create evaluation reports, visualize your research performance for grant applications and annual evaluations, benchmark your performance against colleagues, and develop collaborations with peers or even companies. 

How can I measure the impact of my research?

You can measure the impact of your research in various ways:

  • Traditional bibliometric measures: These measures offer analysis around publication numbers, citations to a publication, Journal Impact Factors (JIF), and H-index.
  • Alternative metrics or altmetrics: These measures provide insights into the extent to which your research is shared and discussed via news outlets, blogs and social media, or even mentioned in patents and policy documents.

The library of the UvA offers you access to three tools which can help you analyse the impact of your research at both the bibliometric and altmetrics level.

  • Scival: A bibliometric tool that uses data from Scopus to analyze the research performance of universities, groups, individuals, and even countries.
  • Essential Science Indicators (ESI): set of indicators, based on data from Web of Science Core Collection, which can be used to analyze the research performance of universities, groups, individuals, and even countries.
  • Altmetric Explorer: A web-based platform that provides a up to date measure of attention around scholarly research.

Scival

SciVal is a support tool which can provide insights into patterns and trends within research areas, helping you to visualize data in smart ways to your benefit.

  • How do I access Scival

    Scival is only accessible within the UvA buildings (whit in the UvA IP domain, also available with VPN / pulse). You can access SciVal using your Elsevier account or simply create a new account if you do not have one yet (via the website of SciVal.)

  • How can SciVal help you?
    • Analyze research trends: SciVal allows you to analyze research trends by research area. Citation and publication data can lead you to top researchers and upcoming talents in your field.
    • Identify individuals or groups of researchers: SciVal can help you identify individual researchers, or put together groups of researchers, by subject area or publication set.
    • Generate large data sets and tables: SciVal runs on a supercomputer allowing you to quickly generate and visualize large data sets and tables.
    • Import data sets: SciVal calculates key figures for the UvA as a whole, allowing you to import data sets, such as data sets from Pure.
  • Scival support

    The library can provide you with support if you need help using SciVal. If you would like to learn more about SciVal or have any feedback after using SciVal, please contact the field-specific information specialists who will be happy to help.

    Please visit the the Scival website to access manuals on how to use SciVal.

Essential Science Indicators (ESI)

ESI is a set of indicators that helps you identify top-performing research in Web of Science Core Collection. With ESI you can rank authors, institutions, countries, and journals in 22 broad fields based on publication and citation performance.

  • How do I access Essential Science Indicators?

    With in the UvA ip domain you can access ESI without the need of an account.

  • Essential Science Indicators Support

    The library can provide you with support if you need help using Essential Science Indicators.

    Please visit http://esi.help.clarivate.com/Content/home.htm to access their support page on how to use Essential Science Indicators.

  • Options in Essential Science Indicators

    Essential Science Indicators consist of three parts: Field Baselines, Citation Thresholds, and indicators. You can select Thresholds, citation rates and top papers by research field for authors, journals, institutions and countries.

    • Examine the research performance of top-ranking institutions, countries, journals, authors, and papers in each of the 22 research fields in Essential Science Indicators.
    • Compare the citation performance of a paper with that of its peers by both publication period and field.
    • Identify trends and emerging areas of research in the sciences and social sciences.

Altmetric Explorer

The Altmetric Explorer from Altmetric.com is a tool to provide insight into an aspect of social impact. The social impact of research is in this case about the number of reports in the news, government publications (policy documents), patents, but also on blogs and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. These alternative indicators measure the degree of social engagement. Altmetrics are available significantly faster than citation counts, because people can react to the research immediately after publication. Besides, there is no peer review.

  • Access to Altmetric Explorer
    • You can log into Altmetric Explorer using your UvAnetID on the Altmetric Explorer website.
    • Altmetric Explorer is also accessible outside the UvA domain (with the use of your UvAnetID).
  • Options in Altmetric Explorer

    Altmetric Explorer has a user-friendly dashboard which enables you to:

    • See where, by whom, when and how often your publication, whether an article, dataset, book chapter or report, is being discussed on the web.
    • Discover which policy documents from around the world are referring to your publications.
    • Gain an understanding of societal involvement around your scientific research.
    • Download data and include altmetrics data in your grant applications or evaluations.
  • Data in Altmetric Explorer (tips)
    • The Altmetric Explorer follows various sources and websites. The tool also regularly adds new relevant websites to follow. Take this into account when creating multi-year reports, for example.
    • Curious about the sources that Altmetric monitors? Find out on the Altmetric website.
    • Be critical when interpreting scores. Remember that Altmetric monitors data. The tool is not responsible for the content of messages or the reliability of data shared by the original source.
  • Useful features in the Altmetric Explorer
    • The option 'edit search' allows you to specify how you want to search. For example, searching by 'Type of output', 'Keywords' or 'Publication date'.
    • The option 'quick search' allows you to perform a quick search.
    • Performed a useful search? Save it easily with the 'save search' button.
    • Receive daily, weekly or monthly updates of your saved search by e-mail via 'saved searches'.
  • Tips for using Altmetric Explorer
    • Make sure that all your publications are registered in Pure UvA, the registration system for research output. Altmetric Explorer tracks the publications which have a DOI in Pure UvA. In addition, Altmetric Explorer tracks the handles (= persistent identifier of a record in UvA-DARE) of the publications validated in Pure UvA in the UvA-DARE repository.
    • Are you on social media? In addition to the reference in Pure UvA, always mention the DOI, handle or ISBN on social media or refer to a webpage which contains the DOI. This way, your post, including reactions, can be found and monitored by Altmetric.
    • Open Access publications are more accessible on social media, also for non-academic readers.
  • Altmetric Explorer support
    • Please visit Altmetic.com to access their support page on how to use Altmetic Explorer.
    • The library can provide you with support if you need help using Altmetric Explorer. Please contact Hanneke van der Veen.
    H.S. (Hanneke) van der Veen MA LLM

    Library of the UvA

    Digitale Infrastructuur

    +31 (0)6 42 06 75 45

UvA-view

UvA view provides an overview of the publication landscape at the University of Amsterdam at various levels of the organisation, providing insight into the publication behaviour of UvA staff members.

Within UvA-view resources are linked, analysed, and visualized using state-of-the-art techniques. UvA-view covers data from Pure - the university’s research information system, Web of Science, Scopus, Narcis, Google Scholar, and the local library catalogue.