Tools for Authors: Tracking Your Work

There are a number of reasons for tracking how your work is being used. Reasons include:

• Publication data are your “public profile.” Learn which authors and institutions are using your work.
• How and why is your work being used? Look at citations and alternative metrics to assess impact.
• Tenure/Promotion
• Grants
  • NIH Biosketches (Contributions to Science section)
  • NSF Biosketches (Synergistic Activities)
  • Grant applications and renewals

Other Reasons:

• Confirm that research findings were properly attributed and credited
• Determine if research findings are duplicated, confirmed, corrected, improved or repudiated
• Determine if research findings were extended (different human populations or animal models/species), etc.
• Document the uptake of your research
• Identify similar research projects
• Identify possible collaborators
• Document research impact
• Quantify return on research investment

1.  Create author citation alerts in databases to be notified when your work is cited by another work. Alerts can be set to run daily, weekly, or monthly and can be sent via email or RSS feed as well in specific formats such html. Examples of databases that offer citation tracking for authors:

• Scopus: Author Citation Alerts tutorial
• Web of Science: Citation Alerts tutorial

2.  Establish an author profile in Google Scholar and create an alert to be notified when your work is cited by another work.

3.   Establish a Google Alert based on your name or research study for email notification of the latest relevant Google results on the alert.

4.  Use the free Altmetric bookmarklet to track other forms of metrics (non-citations) for your published journal articles.  Drag the Bookmarklet to your browser's bookmarks bar and use this for any journal article to learn of any "engagement" activity for a journal article. See Article Metrics for more information.

Telling Impact Stories: Video from Cushing/Hay Medical Library at Yale University.