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Research Metrics Toolkit

Metrics for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education researchers

For Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education researchers, research metrics are available quickly and easily through the research metrics dashboard and your author profile. There are 3 key places for author profiles:

Scopus and Web of Science each index a list of specific journals. Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education topics are covered in both databases so you will likely find at least some of your journal article publications included in your profile, although coverage might not be as strong compared to some Health and Science topics. There is more limited coverage of books, book chapters, and conference papers - but you may find that some of these publications are included here too. Google Scholar can be a helpful extra tool as its search engine usually finds more publications and citations from across the web.

Tip: What metrics do I need? How do I find them?

Here are some examples of metrics you could include in your application, and where to find them.

Tip: Policy citations, patent citations, and news citations can demonstrate impact

Want to know if your research has been cited in any policy documents, patents, or the news? Altmetric.com captures this data for publications with a DOI, and the quickest way to access it is via Elements:

  1. Log in to Deakin Elements
  2. View your publication list by selecting Menu > Publications
  3. Select metrics from the focus on drop-down list
  4. Scroll down the list to see the Altmetric “donuts” and look out for purple stripes (policy) and light red stripes (news) or orange stripes (patents).

Myth: Using the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as a metric for articles or authors

While the JIF may be helpful for evaluating the influence of journals within a particular subject area, it should not be used to measure the quality of an individual article, or the impact of a researcher. It has been used this way in the past, but bibliometrics experts discourage it, and recommend more appropriate article and author-level metrics.

Caution: Author profiles

To work with most of the metrics described in this guide, you will need to update and maintain your author profiles regularly. Author profiles are the foundation for bibliometric analysis.

 
You must maintain and update your author profiles (even those created for you) to:
  • Be able to quickly gather accurate research metrics
  • Ensure publications are correctly attributed to you
  • Ensure publications are correctly attributed to Deakin
  • Ensure your work is seen in its best light by reviewers who may use these database products as part of their assessment.

Find out more about Author Profiles.

  • Last Updated: May 15, 2025 4:58 PM
  • URL: https://deakin.libguides.com/research-metrics
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