Research Impact: How can I track the impact of my work on policy?

• Dimensions is a large multi-disciplinary database. Individuals can search the free version even though UW doesn't have a subscription to the full version.
• Register for a free account. Then you can search for your name, claim your author profile, and see citation counts and Altmetric data for all your publications.
• Altmetric data includes policy citations.
• A well-maintained ORCID profile (set to "public") helps to keep your Dimensions profile accurate and current.

Altmetric is a company that tracks mentions of scholarly articles across social media, news, clinical guidelines, and policy documents.

You can install the free Altmetric bookmarklet in your web browser (Safari, Chrome, or Firefox). To use it:

1. Visit a web page that contains the DOI of the article you're interested in. This could include the publisher's website, PubMed, or arXiv.
2. Click on the "Altmetric It!" bookmarklet.
3. You'll see "mentions" of that article that Altmetric has captured.
4. If there is a tab that says Clinical Guidelines or Policy Documents, you'll see what documents in these categories have cited the article.

The Altmetrics guide provides more information on Altmetric.com and altmetrics data.

Definitions and uses of altmetric data are described in the Metrics Toolkit.

Sage Policy Profiles looks for citations of your publications in policy documents from governments and official bodies, but also from IGOs, some NGOs and think tanks.

The source of your publications is your ORCID profile. Updating your ORCID profile with new publications automatically updates your Sage Policy Profile.

1. Go to Sage Policy Profiles.
2. Create an account.
3. Provide your ORCID iD.
4. Sage Policy Profile will create a dashboard for you, linking to policy documents that cite your articles.
5. Choose to receive alerts with new citations every week or every month.

Note: You can only track citations of your own publications with Sage Policy Profiles, not someone else's.