Research Impact

Make your research easy to discover by creating and managing a strong scholarly profile that reflects your contributions over time and across different fields. We can support you in developing your scholarly profile, using tools and strategies that enhance the visibility of your work and highlight its impact.

• Register your ORCID to create a stable digital identifier that links together your scholarly contributions — don’t forget to include your LAU affiliation.
• Create and manage your Google Scholar profile.
• Claim and manage your Scopus and Web of Science IDs.
• Preserve your work in our digital repository (LAUR).
• Find metrics and rankings related to your research impact, and more.

Where to Publish

For early-career researchers, one of the biggest challenges is deciding which journal is most suitable for their manuscript. The main criteria for choosing a journal are:

• Favor peer-reviewed journals and avoid predatory ones.
• Select journals indexed by major indexes such as Scopus and Web of Science.
• Preferably target journals in the first or second quartile (Q1 or Q2) — keep in mind that quartiles are discipline-specific.
• Consider journal impact and metrics; high-impact journals can increase the visibility and citation of your work.
• Use the LAU journal selection tool, ORBIT, and other tools such as Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Scopus Journal Finder.
• Learn more about Open Access Publishing, Article Processing Costs (APCs), and LAU’s transformative agreements and waivers in our Open Access Publishing section.

Author’s Rights Retention

Traditionally, authors submitting an article to a journal transfer copyright to the publisher by signing the publisher’s “Copyright Transfer Agreement” (CTA). Many publishing agreements impose restrictions on the use of the work that can even affect the author’s own use of it in teaching and research.

It is possible for authors to have their work published without signing over all rights. The most common way of achieving this is for the publisher to hold a “License to Publish” (LTP) while the author retains the rest of the bundle of rights.

Authors can also request an addendum to the publishing agreement to secure the right to reuse the material they have created. It is preferred that you seek advice from the Graduate Studies and Research Office for information on rights retention. An important source for basic information about publishers’ self-archiving policies is Open Policy Finder.

Citation Metrics

Bibliometrics are measures based on citation counts used to evaluate the scholarly impact of publications and researchers. Citation metrics are commonly applied at different levels:

• Article level: to assess the value and influence of a specific research paper.
• Author level: to evaluate a researcher’s productivity and impact within the scientific community.
• Journal level: to determine the importance and prestige of a publication.

It is important to interpret bibliometric data carefully. Citation patterns vary by discipline, evolve over time, and differ between types of publications. To provide a fair and accurate assessment, citation data should be normalized by discipline, publication year, and type — often using metrics like Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) or Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), where 1.0 is average, above 1.0 is above average, and below 1.0 is below average.