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With arguments raging about the need to demonstrate research impact in the new Research Excellence Framework (REF), academics are seeking out ways to prove their work has been read and has made a difference.  One of the controversial measures under discussion is bibliometrics to rate citation impact.  Currently, the only tool Loughborough has to generate citation measures is Web of Science, and it’s coverage of some subjects  (such as business and engineering)  is weak.

Enter Publish or Perish.  This site works with Google Scholar’s citation data to provide author impact analyses and journal impact analyses.  Install onto your machine and you can calculate your own h-index, cites per paper, and many other metrics.  Similarly, you can compare the ‘impact’ of journals not covered by the Journal Citation Reports. 

Just as Google Scholar’s data isn’t perfect, neither are the results generated by Publish or Perish.  However, it’s free, and definitely worth a look.  Check it out at http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm

Taken by the Washington Department of Natural Resources, reproduced c/o Flickr, used under the cc licence

“Thousands of people worldwide are killed each year due to slope failures” – Dr. Neil Dixon, Loughborough University.

A partnership between the British Geological Survey (BGS) and Loughborough University has seen a recent stride forward in the development of new life-saving, landslide technology. Project funding has been received from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop a pioneering early-warning, low-cost sensor for the detection of landslides. The devices currently on the market tend to be expensive, with budgetary implications for those developing countries where such devices are often needed. Technologically their usefulness is also limited.

This is not the first time the University has been involved in this type of innovation. Between 2005 – 2009 the first part of this project, The Acoustic Real-Time Monitoring System (ALARMS) project, saw the development of an early warning system for slopes – the uncertainty and failure of slope stability in many areas of the world being a major cause of loss of life and immense cost to the economy, as well as disruption and damage to the local environment.

The latest funding is for a one-year project, led by Dr. Neil Dixon, Professor of Geotechnical Engineering who will be working with Dr. Matthew Spriggs, both from the Geotechnics Research Group, in collaboration with scientists at the BGS.

Check out some of Dr. Dixon’s publications on the University’s Institutional Repository and Dr. Sprigg’s profile for further information about the ALARMS project.

The Web of Science database now allows authors to calculate their own research impact in terms of who is citing them, and where. The “Researcher ID” tool both calculates and generates graphical representations of citations to all your papers on the Web of Science database.  Simply register, select your publications from the Web of Science database, and it does the rest.

• * View a world map with all those citing you marked on it. 
• * View your citations over time. 
• * Calculate your own H index (1).

As more of your papers are cited, your Researcher ID data gets updated automatically.  See http://wokinfo.com/researcherid/ for more information.  Or contact your Academic Librarian http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/about/StaffList.html 

(1) h is the number of articles greater than h that have at least h citations.   This metric is useful because it discounts the disproportionate weight of highly cited papers or papers that have not yet been cited.