Robin Champieux (Oregon Health and Science University), Heather Coates (IUPUI), and Stacy Konkiel (Altmetric) have released a Metrics Toolkit for understanding “what a [scholarly] metric means, how it is calculated, and if it’s a good match for your research question.” Champieux, Coates, and Konikel describe the purpose of the toolkit:
We developed the Metrics Toolkit to help scholars and evaluators understand and use citations, web metrics, and altmetrics responsibly in the evaluation of research.
The Metrics Toolkit provides evidence-based information about research metrics across disciplines, including how each metric is calculated, where you can find it, and how each should (and should not) be applied. You’ll also find examples of how to use metrics in grant applications, CVs, and promotion dossiers.
There are two ways to use the Toolkit. Explore metrics to browse the metrics you want to learn more about. Or, you can choose metrics that will be best for your use case by filtering via our broad discipline, research output, and impact type categories.
The site also includes use cases and a list of resources to learn more about metrics.
