Alternative Metrics
Alternative metrics (altmetrics) Use the social web—such as download counts, pageviews, mentions in news reports, social media, and blogs—to analyze the societal attention your work receives. They provide a complementary way to assess the impact of your scholarship beyond academia.
Altmetrics:
- include social media activity, coverage in media outlets, and inclusion in policy documents or scholarly commentary
- are data tracked from discussions happening online
- can be gathered from any online forum where research is being discussed, including social media, research blogs, public policy documents, news articles and more
- measure the impact of scholarly and social use of research in a way that can be applicable to a wide variety of fields
- measure how research is having an impact outside of the academy
- offer a greater sense of immediacy
- compliment established methods such as citation counts and impact factor but don't replace them
Advantages/Disadvantages
Altmetrics are generated more quickly than traditional metrics, such as the impact factor, which permits the impact of your publications to be assessed much sooner. They provide broader and deeper insights into the impact of scholarly articles, researchers, universities, and other such things that lie outside the scope of traditional metrics. They can reveal how an article or piece of research affects diverse groups such as practitioners, educators and the general public
However, it can be difficult to use altmetrics comparatively between different disciplines, or even in the same discipline. Some disciplines are more active than others online, and some may favor particular social media tools that are used less often in other areas of scholarship. Fluctuations in the popularity of social media tools can reduce the reliability of altmetrics scores.
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Qualitative research assessment: Highlighting research impact
What is qualitative assessment? Exploring broader research contributions
Qualitative assessment. Recognizes diverse activities that shape research, teaching, and engagement. Helps showcase the full impact of your work—on policy, students, communities, and research culture. Moving you beyond traditional metrics like citation counts that don’t tell the whole story of your research.
Why should I care?
- Tells the full story of your research impact—not just how often you’re cited
- Strengthens grant and promotion applications with richer evidence of your contributions
- Recognizes all the ways your work makes a difference—mentorship, policy influence, community partnerships, and more
- Helps meet evolving expectations from funders and publishers
Category | Description | Example |
---|---|---|
Clearly define your contribution using CRediT Taxonomy
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Make sure your contributions are recognized by using a clear description. A growing list of publishers are using CRediT Taxonomy to ensure transparency and accountability. CRedit includes 14 defined roles. |
Data Curation: Managing and preserving data. Visualization: Creating figures, graphs, and models Writing – Original Draft: Preparing the initial manuscript |
Showcase research impact | Go beyond citations—highlight policy influence, innovative ideas, tools, and methodologies. | "Research findings on equitable AI systems contributed to national guidelines for ethical technology deployment." |
Recognize your contributions to teaching | Demonstrate how your research shapes student learning and mentorship. | "Co-designed a climate change module with local organizations, now part of undergraduate courses." |
Highlight community engagement | Document partnerships, stakeholder collaboration, and research mobilization beyond academia. | "Collaborated with Calgary’s immigrant business owners to create a toolkit for underrepresented entrepreneurs." |
Demonstrate knowledge mobilization | Show how your research reaches wider audiences through events, reports, and media. | "Created interactive webinars on mental health literacy, reaching over 1,000 community service providers." |
Advance Your Professional Growth | Show leadership, mentorship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and efforts to foster an inclusive research culture. | "Supervised undergraduate students, with several advancing to graduate programs." |
Engage with open scholarship | Support research transparency and accessibility through open access and data sharing. | "Created a public data repository, facilitating further research and community engagement." |
Next Steps
📌 Want to ensure your contributions are recognized?
🔗 Learn more about CRediT: credit.niso.org
Why it matters: The benefits of going beyond numbers
Incorporating qualitative impacts into research assessments provides a richer understanding of your work’s significance. Increasingly, funding agencies - such at the Tri-Agency - are adopting frameworks inspired by initiatives such as DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment) and the Leiden Manifesto, which advocate for a shift away from a focus on quantitative metrics. This approach highlights diverse contributions and real-world relevance.
Key benefits of this more content-rich approach include:
- Better demonstration of the real-world relevance of your work.
- Alignment with funding agencies’ with funding agencies' evolving priorities, such as equity, diversity, and societal impact.
- A more a comprehensive view of your career, capturing contributions beyond publications.
The narrative CV: Showcasing your work with context
A narrative CV is a flexible, qualitative approach to documenting your contributions, moving beyond lists of metrics to provide meaningful context. Can be adapted as needed to reflect individual strengths and values and purposes. A narrative-driven CV that add depth and clarify to your academic record while maintaining formal structure and clarity.
This format emphasizes:
- Significant contributions: Focus on quality over quantity, highlighting relevance, impact, significance, and key achievements.
- Diverse outputs: Include societal impacts, mentorship, and leadership alongside traditional research outputs such as publications.
- Personalized context: Reflect individual strengths and values.
- Structured approach: Sections on research contributions, mentoring, leadership, EDI efforts, and knowledge mobilization.
- Reviewer-friendly: Provides context for non-standard or less quantifiable outputs and avoids jargon.
Common components:
- Impact statement A section outlining professional philosophy and overarching goals.
- Contextualized achievements: Bullet points or paragraphs explaining the significance of key work.
- Categories beyond research: Mentorship, community outreach, leadership roles.
- Contribution to the wider research or disciplinary community: Such as through interdisciplinary, institutional, or international collaborations, roles like editing, reviewing, or committee work, promoting research integrity or open research practices, and providing strategic leadership to shape research agendas.
- Supporting the development of others': Mentorship, project management, supervision, team leadership, fostering collaboration, guiding team or organizational direction, or contributing to collective success.
- Community outreach: Such as collaborating with public or private sectors, enhancing public understanding, contributing to policy development, or creating impact across research, policy, practice, business, and other user communities.
Practical applications: Using the narrative CV to help you shine
- Grant applications: Some granting agencies, including Tri-Agency (e.g., SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR), are transitioning to narrative CVs built on qualitative research assessment (see the Tri-Agency announcement Oct, 24, 2024).
- Career advancement: Academic promotion and tenure dossiers benefit from highlighting diverse contributions
- Leadership and mentorship roles: Ideal for positions requiring demonstrated leadership, mentoring, or community engagement.
Where to learn more: Tips, resources, and examples
For those seeking deeper insight into qualitative research assessment and narrative CVs, these resources offer guidance, templates, and best practices:
General Resources
- Research Culture: Changing how we evaluate research is difficult, but not impossible. (Hatch & Curry., 2020, eLife).
- DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment): Advocates for reducing reliance on metrics like journal impact factor and promotes qualitative approaches.
- Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics: Offers 10 principles for responsible research evaluation, emphasizing qualitative context and broader contributions.
- CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment): An international collective of organisations committed to reforming the methods and processes by which research, researchers, and research organisations are evaluated
Narrative CV
- Tri-Agency CV.
- CIHR - Tri-agency CV
- NSERC - see Discovery Horizons (pilot) instructions for helpful information
- SSHRC - Tri-agency CV instructions
- How to write a narrative CV (University Affairs)
Qualitative Impact & Knowledge Mobilization
- Research Impact Canada: Tools, resources, and training. Research Impact Canada - A national network focused on supporting researchers in enhancing the impact of their work within communities. They offer tools, resources, training, and insights into best practices.
- Knowledge Mobilization (University of Victoria Libraries) Knowledge mobilization - University of Victoria Libraries
- Knowledge Impact Assessment Toolkit (University of Calgary) Knowledge impact assessment toolkit - University of Calgary
- Guidance recently released at the UofC on writing most significant contributions statement & template
Storytelling and Digital Tools
- Storytelling for impact - Free online course module for ethical and inclusive practices relating to collecting stories from diverse individuals
- Impact story toolkit - Guide to sharing evidence of change after a specific intervention has been put in place (CIVICUS)
- Digital storytelling for social impact. (The Rockefeller Foundation)