By Annette Mendoza, Research Impact Librarian

As businesses and work places begin to open back up, schedules will move back to their hectic pre-pandemic state. Of course, as part of the Feinberg School of Medicine family, we at the library understand that when it comes to medicine there is no “slow time” and that choosing how to spend your time is imperative.

A recent article in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology looked at the use of bibliometric and alternative metric indicators by researchers as a method for determining which articles they will spend their time reading. The research by Lemke, Mazarakis, and Peters indicated that “frequently metrics serve as filters, for example, during literature research, when deciding which sources to cite, or when planning where to publish own works”(p. 779). They noted that their research, along with other studies around this topic, have shown that there is value in researchers having a clear understanding of the “scopes, strengths, and limitations” of impact metrics.

The Metrics and Impact Core (MIC) at the Galter Health Sciences Library and Learning Center want to help you work as efficiently as possible and provide you with the tools necessary to assist you in your research. Our new Metrics Guide will help you understand the definition and common uses of bibliometric indicators. For each of the eight most common indicators, the guide includes the category, definition, use case, location, caveats, and sample statement for that specific indicator. We will continue to add indicators and update information so this guide can be a valuable tool you can bookmark for easy accessibility.

Another tool we’ve recently made available is the MIC Report Catalog. This catalog contains a list of several standardized bibliometric reports that are available to the faculty, staff and students of Feinberg School of Medicine and can be requested via a form on the page. The five reports currently included are:

• Group Publication Metrics Report
• Funding Support Impact Statements
• Funding Support Bibliometric Networks
• Member Collaboration Report
• Group Publication Highlights Presentation

Each report is designed to fulfill a specific purpose and save the time of the team or department looking for impact metrics for a body of work. The report catalog describes each report in detail, provides an explanation of the purpose of the report, and provides a link to a sample PDF of the report specifics.

We encourage you to review the report samples so that when you request a report, you will know which details our team needs to complete it, the output format(s) in which the report will be returned, the data sources used to create the report, and which visualization images will be included. So we can be as thorough and efficient as possible, we request a two week window for the completion of these reports.

The MIC is constantly looking for ways to support the faculty, staff and students of Feinberg School of Medicine. We are hopeful that these new tools will be useful and will save you time.