Q. How can I improve the discovery of my thesis?

Your thesis, whether in print or online, can be discovered by users around the world. 

Users can search for theses from Western Sydney University, ResearchDirect, or from search engines such as Google and Google Scholar.

All records about Australian theses are held in university library catalogues and digital repositories are also made available via Trove, the National Library of Australia's database.

Search engines return results based on the metadata associated with your thesis, such as author, title, keywords. 

Some publishers provide tips for authors on how to optimise metadata for search engine discoverability, for example, assess, Wiley's Author Services,

If you are pursuing an academic career, the discoverability of your work is important, and therefore work is attributed correctly to you. For successful results:

• Register with your ORCID to ensure your thesis and publications are attributed correctly to you.
• Manage your researcher profile by obtaining other appropriate researcher identifiers from citation databases.
• Track usage of your thesis on ResearchDirect.
• Review CiteScore metrics that include eight indicators to analyse the publication influence of serial titles. Helps to measure journal citation impact. Reflects the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. Calculated using data from Scopus.

Web of Science

• Journal Citation Reports (JCR) quartiles: - are journals from which are ranked according to their Journal Impact Factor.
   
• IF (JIF - Journal Impact Factor): is the 2-year journal Impact Factor calculated by Clarivate Analytics as all citations to the journal in the current JCR year to items published in the previous two years, divided by the total number of scholarly items (these comprise articles, reviews, and proceedings papers) published in the journal in the previous two years. Only journals listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) receive an Impact Factor.[1]
   
• 5-Year JIF (Journal Impact Factor): is the 5-year journal Impact Factor, available from 2007 onward, is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year.
   
• Eigenfactor: is a PageRank-type measure of journal influence to the scientific community, considering the origin of the incoming citations. It’s a reflection of the density of the network of citations around the journal using 5 years of cited content as cited by the Current Year. It considers both the number of citations and the source of those citations so that highly cited sources will influence the network more than less cited sources. Eigenfactor scores can be used in combination with the h-index to evaluate the work of individual scientists.
   
• Article Influence score: measures the average influence of articles in the journal and is therefore comparable to the traditional impact factor and it normalises the Eigenfactor Score according to the cumulative size of the cited journal across the prior five years.
   
• Immediacy Index: the Immediacy Index is the count of citations in the current year to the journal that reference content in this same year. Journals that have a consistently high Immediacy Index attract citations rapidly. 

Google Scholar

• h-index – Although originally conceived as an author-level metric, the h-index has been being applied to higher-order aggregations of research publications, including journals. Publishing in a high h-index journal maximises your chances of being cited by other authors and, consequently, may improve your own personal h-index score.
   
• Google Scholar: a growing database that calculates h-index scores for those who have an Altmetrics Profile and rate journals based on scholarly references added to academic social media sites that include:
  • Altmetric Explorer
  • Plum Analytics (Refer to either  Mendeley and Scopus)
  • BioMed Central
  • Public Library of Science (PLOS)
  • Frontiers (free to access upon registration)
  • Nature.com
  • Elsevier
  • The Royal Society
  • Science
  • ImpactStory

Other Tools for Assessing Journal Impact

• ABDC Journal Quality List (Australian Business Deans Council) - useful for assessing the quality of journals related to business.
• Compare sources tool - Scopus: compare sources based on citation metrics. Enables you to search for then select sources for comparison within either a chart or table view. You can compare up to 10 sources with a variety of parameters.
• Google Scholar Metrics: explore publications in research areas of your interest by:
  • Browsing publications in a broad area of research, select one of the areas in the left column. (e.g.)  Engineering & Computer Science or Health & Medical Sciences.
  • To explore specific research areas, by choosing the "Subcategories" link and reviewing the following options (e.g.) Databases & Information Systems or Development Economics

The main differences between Journal Indicators:

• Based on Scopus (RIP and SNIP) vs. based on Web of Science (JIF).
• Correction for field differences (SNIP) vs. no correction for field differences (RIP and JIF).
• Three years of cited publications (RIP and SNIP) vs. two years of cited publications (JIF).
• Citations from selected sources and selected document types only (RIP and SNIP) vs. citations from all sources and document types (JIF).
• Citations to selected document types only (RIP and SNIP) vs. citations to all document types (JIF).

For assistance in determining journal impact assessment, contact your School Librarian or refer to the Metrics Subject Guide.