Rhodes LibraryContinuing Professional Development

Programme 1 August 2013

Eileen Shepherd

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Who said this?

“Measure what can be measured, and make

measurable what cannot be measured.”

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A new measurement for the impact of scholarly

content, based on how far and wide it travels through

the social web, social bookmarking and

collaboration tools.

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Altmetric collects article level metrics

and the online conversations around research

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*measure the impact of individual articles, not just journals (as in Impact Factors)*A critical part of the library's job is helping the research faculty "understand and be able to measure the impact of their works… and since much of their work takes place online now, and not just in the cited periodical literature, there are lots of new ways to measure their impact.“ (Mike Buschman of Plum Analytics)

*ecosystem of research dissemination channels is becoming more broad and diverse*desire in the scientific community to get a more granular breakdown of an article's performance using article level metrics.

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*Researchers are increasingly discussing papers online on social media sites, rather than on publisher's sites.

*traditional method of counting citations to measure impact misses much, not least the impact on wider society

*allows authors & publishers to see what people are saying about a scholarly paper & can tell them how much attention a paper is receiving relative to their peers.

*researchers, funders and institutions are increasingly concerned about the impact of their work and returns on their investments.

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*Researchers are increasingly discussing papers online on social media sites, rather than on publisher's sites.

*traditional method of counting citations to measure impact misses much, not least the impact on wider society

*allows authors & publishers to see what people are saying about a scholarly paper & can tell them how much attention a paper is receiving relative to their peers.

*researchers, funders and institutions are increasingly concerned about the impact of their work and returns on their investments.

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*Librarians and administrators say altmetrics can help provide a more nuanced view of

how scholarship lives in the wider world. "It's not just that we want to see whether

somebody's science paper is picked up on Twitter," says Lisa J. Graumlich, dean of the College of the Environment at the University of Washington. "I think we'll see these tools evolve so that we'll be tracking the impact

of research in a much deeper way."

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*by tracking, collecting and measuring large amounts of data collected from all of the places where people talk about research online

*collects article level metrics and the online conversations around research on behalf of publishers, institutions and funders, combining a selection of online indicators (both scholarly and non-scholarly) to give a measurement of digital impact and reach.

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aggregate impacts from articles, datasets, blog posts, etc.

tweet-tracking service

free online software repository

article metrics

article metrics

citations

citations

• Using the Altmetric API - If you're affiliated with a non-profit organisation or want to use the data in a research project, Altmetrics can grant you a free license for non-commercial use. The free non-commercial license will allow you to fetch basic altmetrics data about articles, which can be used in research or for your own apps and mashups. All they ask is that you give Altmetric attribution somewhere.• Altmetric offers free services for individual

researchers. • The Altmetric Bookmarklet - Instantly get article

level metrics for any recent paper, for free • Finalist for the ALPSP Best

New Journal and Publishing Innovation Awards 04/13/23

• Madness or sadness? Local concepts of mental illness in four conflict-affected African communities

• The role of gaping behaviour in habitat partitioning between coexisting intertidal mussels

• The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution

• Race and the anxieties of cultural obscurity: Meditations on blackness in South African performance and video art

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(non-profit organisation) more focused on publishers than

researchers

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*problematic area in terms of getting good data

*most of the citation databases are still closed

*Google Scholar and ISI do not allow ImpactStory to display their citation counts at all

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Commercial operation

PlumX, is being used to collect data (usage, captures, mentions, social media, citations) in order to generate reports on

publication activity in support of research evaluation.

2 flagship clients: The Smithsonian and the University

of Pittsburgh.

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“…If an article has been downloaded (viewed, etc.) 400

times, what can be gleaned from that "statistic"?  That the article has been downloaded

(viewed, etc.) 400 times.  Beyond that, everything else is conjecture, if not simply wishful

thinking…” (a comment on previous article)

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*“…it might not mean anything that a paper was viewed 400 times, but if you look beneath the surface and see that those 400 views came from the funding organizations relevant to the author and other labs working on related problems, then perhaps it does mean something. 400 views from search engine indexers might mean less, but in reality you'll get a mix and patterns will begin to emerge…” (reply to previous comment)

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*“The real consequential metric is the sum of money one brings in to the university” (cynic!)

*“Altmetrics is designed as a survival tool in a vanishing approval space”

*“Meaningless metrics are meaningless.”

*"altmetrics" or whatever, without specific context, without particulars, are, at best, just data left up to interpretation or, possibly, meaningless.

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*[altmetrics are]… “only as good as the data sources they draw on. And those data sources are a motley crew of open and closed, public and private”

*“See the limitations and take it all with a grain of salt” ( from Impact Story - how shouldn’t it be used?

“The short answer is: probably something useful, but we’re not sure what. We believe that dismissing the metrics as “buzz” is short-sited: surely people bookmark and download things for a reason. The long answer, as well as a lot more speculation on the long-term significance of tools like ImpactStory, can be found in the nascent scholarly literature on “altmetrics.”

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has just been awarded $500,000 for software development by the Sloan Foundation.

They must be doing something right!

Over the next two years, the funds will “support the scaling and further development to sustainability of

ImpactStory, a nonprofit open altmetrics platform that helps scholars evaluate, sort, consume, and reward

web-native products.”

http://www.slideshare.net/SarahG_SS/using-impactstory-an-introduction

Postdoc research associate with Duke University &

Univ of British Columbia

PhD student studying info science information science at the

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

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“The first step, and sometimes a big one, is to make scholars aware that there is a world of metrics beyond citations and impact factors. Even scholars who are active online aren't always aware "that the impact of their work in those new forums can be measured," Mr. Del iyannides (founder of ImpactStory) http://chronicle.com/article/New-Metrics-Providers-Help/139555/

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*Article level metrics: here are the basics

*Riding the crest of the altmetrics wave: How librarians can help prepare faculty for the next generation of research impact metrics

*Rise of 'Altmetrics' Revives Questions About How to Measure Impact of

Research

*New Metrics Providers Help Keep Libraries in the Research-Tracking

Game (Plum Analytics)

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*Altmetrics: What, Why and Where? Special issue of Asis&t Bulletin,(April/May 2013)

* Ask Not What Altmetrics Can Do for You, But What Altmetrics Can Do for Developing Countries

*Metrics 2.0: who will be the ‘Google of altmetrics’?

*From bibliometrics to altmetrics: a changing landscape

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