Overview of measuring and enhancing the impact of your scholarly work in academic medicine. The talk reviews how impact is defined and measured, how to improve your own impact metrics and how to describe the impact of your scholarly contributions to science.

1. Measuring and Enhancing your
Academic Medical Impact
MARION R. SILLS, MD, MPH
PROFESSOR, PEDIATRICS AND EMERGENCY MEDICINE

2. Overview
On Impact
On stakeholders
Measuring impact
Promoting impact

3. Overview
On Impact
On stakeholders
Measuring impact
Promoting impact

4. What is Impact?
Your
academic
work
Patient care
ResearchEducation
Advocacy

5. What is Impact?
Benefit to academic
world
◦ Within field
◦ Beyond field
Benefit to society and
the economy
◦ Individuals
◦ Organizations
◦ Nations
Your
academic
work
Patient care
ResearchEducation
Advocacy

6. Overview
On Impact
On stakeholders
Measuring impact
Promoting impact

7. Who judges your impact?
You!

8. Who judges your impact?
Steve
Mike
CU
Hospital
CU Med
Kevin
Institution-
level
measures

9. Who judges your impact?
Steve
Mike
CU
Hospital
CU Med
Kevin
Collaborators
Recruiters
Journalists
Politicians
Other academics
The universe … and beyond

10. Who judges your impact?
Scholarship: A record of multiple publications related to clinical
or health services topics, that have advanced the science and
practice of health care quality improvement.
Clinical: Development of new techniques, therapies, clinical
guidelines, patient care practices or health care delivery systems
that have improved the health of patients or populations.
Service: Significant involvement in health care advocacy,
community service or outreach, community-based participatory
research programs, or other activities that shape public policy on
health care or that address health disparities.
Teaching: Record of successful mentorship of students,
residents, fellows or other faculty; evidence that mentees have
pursued outstanding careers.

11. Overview
On Impact
On stakeholders
Measuring impact
Promoting impact

12. Measuring impact
Promotions guidance:
◦ Include bibliometrics…
What are
these?

13. Measuring impact
Promotions guidance:
◦ Include bibliometrics…

14. Demonstrating Impact: Publications
Bibliometrics = How many scholars
cite the work

15. Demonstrating Impact: Publications
Promotions guidance:
◦ Include bibliometrics…but these are not enough
◦ “Provide information about the importance, impact and reach of
your creative and scholarly work”
How do you
show this?

16. Demonstrating Impact: Publications
Promotions guidance:
◦ Include bibliometrics…but these are not enough
◦ “Provide information about the importance, impact and reach of
your creative and scholarly work”

17. Demonstrating Impact: Publications
Newer metrics help describe “importance, impact and
reach"
◦ Article-level metrics: how individual articles are being used in the
scientific community
◦ Altmetrics:
◦ Uptake of diverse scholarly work
◦ Measured by activity in web-based environments including those outside
the scientific community

18. Other academic media
Traditional media
Demonstrating Impact: Publications
Article-level metrics
Journal article
Scientific
community

19. Social media
Traditional media
Demonstrating Impact: Scholarship
Altmetrics
Scholarly output
Books, chapters,
podcasts, datasets,
code, slides, posters,
blog posts
Broader
community
Other web-based
activity

20. Article Level Metrics
Introduced in 2009 by the Public Library of
Science (PLoS) for all PLOS journal articles

21. Scholar level metrics

22. Scholar level metrics
For now: build your own impact CV
Track metrics for published work using Altmetric and other tools

23. Altmetric

24. Track metrics for
unpublished work
Use an existing academic sharing
repository
Common repositories of scholarly
output:
◦ Slideshare
◦ FigShare
◦ ResearchGate
◦ Others
Medical education
materials: MedEdPORTAL

25. Repository metrics
Follow your metrics at the
host site
Guide people to your
content

26. Optimizing Altmetrics
Availability of altmetrics depends on your work being available online
◦ Work that is openly available online (no paywall) -> accessible to more people ->
greater impact
Reliability of altmetrics depends on you being easily disambiguated from others
with similar names
◦ Register at ORCID to get your unique identifier

27. Overview
On Impact
On stakeholders
Measuring impact
Promoting impact

28. Using Altmetrics
Tell the story of the impact of your work
◦ Intramurally: e.g., annual reviews and promotions portfolios
◦ Extramurally: e.g., in our NIH Biosketches, job seeking, networking, applying
for opportunities

29. Using Altmetrics
This article received an Altmetric attention score in the top 5% of all research
outputs scored by Altmetric, reflecting social media and other online attention,.
This article has received national news coverage from 3 major news outlets. The
reach of this article included the readership of the New York Times, which
reaches millions worldwide. Based on this attention, Aurora Public Schools has
asked me to join their student nutrition choices team.
The QI project presentation on SlideShare has received 624 views, placing it in
the top 10% of slide decks in SlideShare’s collection. In addition to our impact on
patients in our own hospital, 7 hospital QI teams have contacted me for more
information after viewing my slides, and have implemented our pathway in their
institutions.

30. Improve your altmetrics
Be productive
Promote your own work via CU
Communications
◦ On social media
◦ Include the URL to your work in all posts
◦ Tag well (including @CUAnschutz)
◦ Use a good visual

31. CU Communications
Press release
Sometimes leads to interviews
(Also great at sharing what we post
on social media)

32. Social media
Twitter: more sharing beyond CU
Facebook: more engagements by those you know

33. Take home points
Get your work online
Get an ORCID account
Track your work through metrics like Altmetric
(for publications) and on the hosting website
(like SlideShare) for unpublished work
Promote your work through traditional media
and social media
Use altmetrics to help tell your story—it also
takes narrative

34. Questions?