You can register Reports in UM’s research information system Pure and if you hold the copyright one can upload the PDF to Pure (when faculty policy allows) or link to the report when you are the (co-)author. Adding the report to Pure enables Google Scholar to index it and it will locate citations that appear to match your report. Keep in mind that Google Scholar only indexes publication records where[1]:

  • the full text of your paper is in a PDF file that ends with “.pdf”,
  • the title of the paper appears in a large font on top of the first page,
  • the authors of the paper are listed right below the title on a separate line, and when
  • there is a bibliography section titled, e.g., “References” or “Bibliography” at the end.

If the full text of your report can be made online available through the Pure-portal, the number of times the report has been downloaded will be displayed. For altmetrics to be displayed next to your report in Pure it needs to have a PID, such as a DOI, to be tracked by the altmetric aggregators.

Request a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) from the Library as soon as possible so that altmetrics aggregators can track the mentions and citations of the report.

If the (co-authored) report has been published online by others, you might try Google Scholar for citations, or Altmetric Explorer for additional mentions.

When you uploaded to Zenodo or Figshare, you can use their usage indicators.

However, be cautious when using usage data, and only use them when they are exceptionally high which is often difficult to judge.

[1] See; https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html