Research and Scholarly Impact

The University of Victoria (UVic) signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) in Feb 2024. UVic commits to developing a set of consistent, transparent criteria for research assessment that will contribute to decisions regarding hiring, tenure and promotion, research quality, and research significance.

At UVic research impact is defined as long-term outcomes or effects that take the form of changed thinking, understanding, practices, and behaviours. Impact is the value and effect generated from research and creative activities, focusing on maximizing public good. The goal is to create meaningful engagement outside the academy that leads to changes in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and actions that contribute to broader societal outcomes.

As a signatory of DORA, UVic is committed to fostering a research culture that values equity, diversity, and inclusion. The University aims to uphold these principles responsibly by recognizing the quality, impact, and significance of a broad spectrum of scholarly activities and outputs.

Developed in 2012, the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) recognizes the need to improve the ways in which scholarly outputs are evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties. The outputs of scholarly research may include: scholarly articles, data, software, IP, etc.

The Journal Impact Factor has been used as the primary parameter to compare the scholarly outputs of individuals and institutions. It was originally created by Thomson Reuters as a tool to assist librarians with identifying journals to purchase and not as a measure of the scientific quality of research articles.

Instead, DORA recommends that institutions and researchers focus on:

• not using the Journal Impact Factor to measure quality in isolation,
• developing explicit criteria for use in hiring, tenure, and promotion, highlighting the importance of the scholarly content of a paper more than the journal in which it was published,
• considering the value of all scholarly outputs in addition to research publications,
• citing primary literature in which observations are first reported rather than reviews in order to give credit where credit is due,
• using a range of metrics and indicators (both qualitative and quantitative) to measure or show evidence of scholarly impact, such as influence on policy and practice.

When used responsibly, impact measures can help you:

• Capture the diverse influences and impacts of your scholarship within and beyond academia,
• Understand who is using your scholarship and how it is being disseminated,
• Create success narratives around your scholarship,
• Support qualitative measures of research and scholarly impact such as peer-review,
• Gain insight into research trends in a specific discipline,
• Strengthen applications, such as those for grants or tenure and promotion,
• Realize the advantage of open access,
• Connect with others outside of your immediate scholarly network, including potential graduate student supervisees.

The University of Toronto Libraries has created a table with details of some common tools used to provide metrics and analyze research impact and data.

Note: UVic Libraries does not subscribe to Scopus and Overton. We have access to the SCiVal database till the end of December 2025.