Quality and impact are two critical elements of the scholarly record. Research and scholarship is measured by both long-standing and newly developed techniques and tools.
Peer Review
Authors and publishers rely on the peer-review process to evaluate the quality of manuscripts submitted for publication. With the advent of open access, new forms of peer review are emerging.
Resources
Nature's Peer Review Debate (2006)
Quantitative Measures
Statistical tools have been used for many years to gather quantitative data on the impact of scientific and scholarly research. The set of methods and tools used is called bibliometrics. One form of bibliometrics is the analysis of citations.
Resources
Journal impact factor (essay on Thompson Reuters Impact Factor)
Hirsch, J.E., An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output [h index], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005 November 15; 102(46): 16569–16572
Carl T. Bergstrom, Jevin D. West, and Marc A. Wiseman, The Eigenfactor™ Metrics, The Journal of Neuroscience, 5 November 2008, 28(45): 11433-11434
Alternative Metrics
The advent of open access and scholarship has resulted in new options for evaluating research and scholarship.Resources and Tools
Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer, prepared by Greg Tananbaum (April 2013)
Altmetrics: What, Why, Where (PDF). Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Special Section. 39, no. 4 (April/May 2013)
