Conclusion

This unit has outlined how researchers and others can measure the impact of the work that they do at every stage of the lifecycle. As with many other areas of the scholarly communication process, certain disciplines will be attached to particular measures and librarians may find that they need to work to help their researchers to select the most appropriate metric for what they want to measure. It may also be a challenge to encourage broader thinking around the concept of impact. As this unit has shown, impact is about so much more than numerical measures and librarians should work with their researchers to showcase the wider, qualitative impact that academic work can have.