Interesting Nature editorial on measuring individual scientific achievement.
“A poll of Nature’s readers suggests that feelings about metrics are mixed. Many researchers say that, in principle, they welcome the use of quantitative performance metrics because of the potential for clarity and objectivity. Yet they also worry that the hiring, promotion and tenure committees that control their [...]

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Google Scholar announced a new tool for searching within cited works to trace the impact of a work.

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STAR METRICS (Science and Technology in America’s Reinvestment – Measuring the EffecT of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness and Science) is a federal and university partnership which is developing an empirical framework to measure the outcomes of science investments and demonstrate the benefits of scientific investments to the public. The project is led by the National [...]

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Two interesting articles in Nature on demonstrating the impact of research:
In the Public Eye
“Society deserves to see a return on its investment in science, but researchers need help to make their case.”
Science Funding: Science for the Masses
“It makes scientists think more explicitly about how their work is connected to enhancing benefits to society.”

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What is the difference between the Impact score and the Significance score as part of the new enhanced review criteria for NIH applications?  A clarification to the notice was issued in January 2010 announcing the development of a working group to develop additional guidance on this issue.
For more information on Impact vs. Significance, see the [...]

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“Beyond citation analysis: a model for assessment of research impact” was recently published and describes a project whereby the authors examined the research impact of a large clinical trial study, the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS). The study found that using citation analysis as a sole tool was not sufficient, nor was it predictive of [...]

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The Public Library in Science (PLoS) articles now include a metrics tab– “Article-Level Metrics“–that allows for evaluation of research impact. Available data includes:

Article usage statistics – HTML pageviews, PDF downloads and XML downloads
Citations from the scholarly literature – currently from PubMed Central, Scopus and CrossRef
Social bookmarks – currently from CiteULike and Connotea
Comments – left by readers [...]

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A new report, “Communicating Knowledge: How and Why UK Researchers Publish and Disseminate their Findings” published by the Research Information Network (RIN) and JISC is now available.
“According to the report, if funders and institutions want to encourage researchers to disseminate their work through a variety of channels as well as in high-status journals, they must [...]

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Are you looking for a collaborator in your area of research? One tool to use to find a potential collaborator is SCOPUS. You can use SCOPUS to find other researchers who have cited your work to discover how they’ve used your research findings. By reviewing publications that cite your work you can learn if other researchers [...]

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PloS recently initiated a program to provide metrics for individual articles published in all PLoS journals. This program focuses on the impact of the article itself instead of the journal and includes metrics for assessing the impact of the article by using indicators such as cited-by citations, social bookmarks, blog coverage, to name a few.
“. . [...]

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