Measuring impact on the web

Potential indicators

• Page views/visits
  • easy to measure, but what does it tell us?
  • be careful of confusing terminology (i.e., page views vs. visits, unique visits, etc.)
• Downloads
  • also easy to measure, but...
  • don't forget to account for common user behavior (e.g., same user downloads a publication multiple times)
• Citations
  • lots of different sources of information, but can't just add them up for grand total
  • important to benchmark vis-vis other publications in your discipline
• Mentions in the media/blogs
  • "blogosphere" great marker of what's hot
  • easy to set up automated alerts
• RSS feeds
  • keep track of number of subscribers
• Search engine rankings
  • look out for differences across country platforms
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Recommended information sources

• Web statistics

• IFPRI Web stats: click on IFPRI Inf from Intranet homepage and then on Web & Pub Stats (right hand column)

• Citation/Refernces

• Google Scholar
• ISI Web of Science
• CiteSeer
• IDEAS/RePEc

•  Media/Blogs

• Google News
• Google Alerts (need Google account)
• Technorati (for blogs)

• Search engines

• Country platforms
• Google Grants Program