Research Impact

There is no one definition of what it means for research to be impactful. We are sometimes taught to think of impact as publishing articles in certain journals or receiving acceptances to certain conferences. However, the core purpose of research isn’t to generate citations or acceptances, but to increase knowledge, change practices, and forge meaningful connections both within and outside of academia.

Impact & Academic Communities

Throughout the research process, most researchers hope to reach experts in similar academic communities. We are traditionally trained to think of publication in scholarly journals as an important activity in academia, with priority going to publishing in well-known or heavily cited journals.

As a graduate student, ask yourself  the following questions when considering academic impact:

• Which academic communities stand to benefit from my research?
• How do I want academic practice or knowledge to change as a result of my research?
• How do members of these academic communities look for / find information?
• What would evidence of my impact look like in these communities?

The answers to these questions can shape everything from your research agenda to where and how you choose to communicate your research. They can also help you identify impact metrics that may be a good match for tracking your research impact over time.

Well-known (although controversial) examples of academic research metrics include:

• Citation counts. The number of times a research output (usually an article) is cited by others.
• Journal Impact Factor. A journal-level metric invented in the 1950s that suggests the average number of citations that items in a journal receive within a brief window of time.
• H-index. An author-level metric invented in 2005 that compares the number of citations generated by a researcher to the number of articles published by the same researcher.

Remember that metrics are not a measure of research quality. Because of their innate simplicity, they can only ever tell a partial story of your research’s impact. Still, knowing what impact metrics are and how to use them appropriately can help you advocate effectively for yourself as a grad student, researcher, grant-seeker, or future academic.

Altmetric is a web-based tool used to quantitatively track article-level, rather than journal-level, metrics, which are an evolving area. Measures on Altmetric include the number of citations in social media sites, as well as open peer or crowd-based recommendations or reviews. The Health Sciences Library has a guide to Altmetric and other article-level metrics available online. Altmetric is a way to measure research impact outside of academic circles and discourse, and is designed to get away from the closed and problematic indications of metrics in journals.

Impact & Non-Academic Communities

Most research also has as one of its goals to affect outcomes, practices, knowledge, and resources that exist in communities outside of academia. These non-academic communities can include local residents, specific demographics, research-informed practitioners, or even national and international policy makers.

If you want your research to have an impact outside of academia, it is important to take time to reflect on the how you will build and maintain ethical connections with your targeted community, including after your research is complete.

For example, ask yourself the following questions* when considering community-engaged forms of research.

• What community is your research accountable to beyond your academic community?
• How will you demonstrate your desire to be accountable to this community? 
• How does everyone involved in this project benefit from the research? 
• What questions does the community want answered?
• What compensation can you offer community participants to honor their time and skills?
• What would evidence of impact look like in this community?

*These questions were adapted by Dr. Moya Bailey at Northwestern University as a starting place for conducting research in collaboration with community members for heightened impact. For a full list of questions to help guide your own accountability in the research process, see Bailey’s article, #transform(ing)DH Writing and Research: An Autoethnography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics.