Adventures in Bibliometrics: Research Impact and the CTSI

Abstract

Objectives Bibliometrics, the application of quantitative analysis to publications, is of growing importance for institutions, departments, and research centers. This paper describes one library's collaboration with a Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) to employ evaluative bibliometrics to determine research impact.

Methods The Libraries were approached by the CTSI Monitoring & Evaluation Team to engage in a process of identifying and implementing the most appropriate bibliometrics for evaluation purposes. This initiative leveraged the library's understanding of NIH's Public Access Compliance Monitor, Scopus, Web of Science, and research networking systems such as SciVal Experts and Pure. Using grant information, a strategy was developed to identify CTSA-funded publications and to calculate and represent effective measures of impact. Results For the first time the CTSI had the ability to benchmark supported publications against research publication productivity at the University, at other universities, across disciplines, against six other CTSA sites and track progress across the years of the CTSA grant.

Conclusions The Libraries was able to contribute high quality, standardized metrics to evaluating the University CTSI’s impact in clinical translational and team science of their contributions to advancing health research that can make a difference to individual and population health. In addition, provide useful information for their recent grant applications where standardized bibliometric analytics will be very valuable in strengthening the proposals.