Tracking Your Impact
The diversity of options available related to publishing and access makes tracking the impact of your scholarship both more of a challenge and more important than ever. The good news is that certain tools can ease the burden somewhat, but the bad news is that no single tool is a "silver bullet" that will meet all your needs.
Publish or Perish is free software that retrieves and analyzes your academic citations, ultimately providing you with powerful quantitative data in a variety of metrics. This is exceptionally useful for assistant professors coming up for tenure, as it can help make your case for the impact of your research, though others who just want to quantify their citations more effectively might be interested as well. The software is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and the site also provides good information about how it works and who might benefit the most from its use.
Another widely used and important tool is Google Scholar, which enables a suite of options, including managing and tracking your own publications and citations thereof, a citation library that can also automatically track who cites you and whom you cite, and a powerful gateway to find scholarly source material. Also, the service can recommend citations to you automatically based on your previous searches, saved citations, and your own published material, which is a great way to locate sources that otherwise might escape your notice. Google Scholar can be accessed and set up through your Portfolio, using the Google Apps link. One downside is that the interface is not the most intuitive. For assistance, please contact your divisional ACM.