Researcher Profiles and Impact
Supporting you in getting your research seen and cited
Researcher profiles and IDs
A well-maintained and updated online presence offers numerous benefits to researchers:
- Impact. Track and calculate a variety of indicators and metrics using these services
- Identify. Ensure your achievements are visible and correctly attributed, using unique identifiers
- Compliance. Meet journal submission requirements by including identifiers like ORCiD
- Networking. Connect with researchers around the globe and explore opportunities for collaboration
Key profiles to manage:
ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a persistent identifier for researchers, allowing you to unambiguously differentiate yourself throughout your career regardless of name changes, changes in institutional affiliations, and inconsistencies in name formatting. Researchers set up and own their ORCiD account, but the Open Research team can help you with setting it up, updating it, and incorporating it in Aston systems.
A Clarivate Researcher ID is a unique individual ID assigned to researchers within Web of Science and Publons for the purposes of disambiguation. Authors will need to request a ResearcherID through Web of Science. UKRI have chosen Web of Science to provide the analytics data to the REF panels who are using citation data as one indicator of "academic significance" so an accurate and current profile is important. You are recommended to regularly check your ResearcherID profile to ensure your outputs have all been correctly affiliated to you, and to link your ORCiD to your ResearcherID.
A Scopus Author ID distinguishes researchers by assigning them a unique number in Scopus under which all their outputs are collated. Authors are automatically assigned an ID when they first publish in a journal index by Scopus. Scopus IDs are collated using data mining techniques, which can result in some inaccuracies. You are recommended to regularly check your Scopus profile to ensure correct affiliations and to merge any duplicate profiles created by variant name formatting. The Open Research team can advise and assist in this.
A well-maintained Google Scholar profile contributes to raising your impact as Google Scholar is the starting point for many people searching for academic works, particularly those without institutional access.
- Pure and Aston Research Explorer
Your Pure profile in Aston Research Explorer is a key portal for boosting your academic achievements. With high quality Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), your Aston Research Explorer profile serves as a personal resume and webpage representing your research career and interests. The Open Research team and RKE can advise on updating your Pure profile, and guidance is available through RKE.
Networks for researchers
Joining a networking platform for researchers enables your publications to reach a wider audience, allows you to interact with researchers who share the same interests as you and potentially the development of future collaborations. While these sites are not repositories and therefore depositing outputs in them alone is not compliant with Open Access policies, networking platforms still offer a valuable space to increase visibility and impact.
- ResearchGate
- Academia.edu
- Mendeley
- SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
Think about the audiences you wish to reach – academic, industry, public – and the spaces you may find them. ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Mendeley may help you connect to other researchers while Twitter may help you build public engagement.
These platforms will have the benefit of boosting your discoverability, offering alternative or additional metrics, and allowing opportunities for discussion and interaction.
Measuring your research impact
Aston aims to support researchers in understanding their research impact in accordance with best practice for responsible research assessment. Aston is a signatory of DORA and has a Responsible Metrics Working Group and policy in place.
Aston subscribes to SciVal, Scopus and Web of Science (not Clarivate InCites). You can use these resources to investigate output metrics, author metrics, and journal metrics. Please be aware that the quality of the data analysis depends on the quality of the data sources: ensure that your researcher profiles are updated!
All metrics will have their limitations, whether that is due to their data sources, how they are calculated, or simply that they cannot replace expert peer review. You should consider carefully what the metrics are actually measuring, not use them as proxies for research quality. For support in using SciVal or other tools, please get in touch with your College Information Specialist or the Open Research Team . Further information about the responsible use of metrics at Aston University can be found on the Research Integrity, Governance and Ethics page.