Objective: To provide an overview of evaluating scientific scholarly impact among researchers in the health sciences. Librarians, as department liaisons, are a natural choice for guiding faculty, students, and tenure and promotion committees in understanding and responsibly applying altmetrics and bibliometrics, including the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR), to evaluate the impact of contemporary health sciences scholars.

 

Background: Scholars in the health sciences, particularly clinician-researchers, who divide their time among patient care, education, as well as academic service, have less time for research than other scientists. Thus, citation patterns vary across the disciplines, possibly placing clinicians at a disadvantage when traditional bibliometrics are used to determine scholarly, as well as societal impact. Judicious use of altmetrics can complement bibliometrics and citation analysis to provide a clearer picture of the scholarly and societal impact of clinician-researchers. The RCR can be a helpful counterpart to altmetrics, because it normalizes across the

 

Implications for Health Sciences Librarians:  Health sciences librarians can consult with faculty, students, and committees on best practices for using altmetrics to help determine scholarly impact. This paper will illustrate various means of using social media and incorporating altmetrics into clinicians’ curriculum vitae and grant proposals. It will also review the strengths, limitations and implications of using them. In addition, librarians can introduce the RCR to their departments and demonstrate iCite in calculating the RCR.

 

Conclusion: Both altmetrics and RCR have great potential for showing a more complete and accurate picture of the scholarly and societal impact of researchers who work in the health sciences and librarians can take the lead in managing this evolution.