Demystifying scholarly metrics: A practical guide

It seems like research metrics are everywhere. In promotion and tenure portfolios, grant applications, databases, and even curriculum vitae, authors are attempting to quantify the impact of their research. And those authors often turn to libraries and librarians to assist in this process. Vinyard and Colvin have developed a practical introduction to the topic of research metrics, suitable for both librarians and faculty. If you’re looking for a technical introduction to bibliometrics or want to rework the mathematical proof for Hirsch’s H-index, this book is not for you. But for anyone looking for a basic introduction to research metrics as they apply to institutional-level data, authors, journals, and books, then this guide will be an invaluable resource. The authors do a good job of placing research metrics within the context of current forms of scholarship, while also acknowledging the limitations and caveats involved in using any set of statistics as they relate to research productivity and impact. Of particular note are the details they provide about the challenges and options related to monographic measures. Research productivity and metric discussions often omit book metrics or any discussion related to the measure of the impact of monographic works. This is only one of several ways the authors have created a work that will be of use to librarians and faculty in all disciplines. The authors also include an informative, but brief, chapter on open-access options and how this publishing option relates to research metrics. There are other areas that distinguish this contribution to the field from other resources about research metrics. The authors develop a case study in chapter 7, “Publish, Don’t Perish! Applying What You’ve Learned,” that shows a Professor X and his efforts to put into practice the tracking, interpreting, and broader context of metrics for selected items on a hypothetical CV. While targeted to any reader, the chapter is particularly helpful for faculty who are trying to implement many of the strategies discussed elsewhere in the work. For librarians, chapter 8, “Developing or Finding Metrics Services at Your Library,” includes strategies for first evaluating the need for metrics services and then implementing strategies for the development or expansion of these types of services in libraries.