AltMetrics

Bruce AntelmanThinkLoudbruce @ thinkloud.com

Capturing the Buzz

For years scientists have been trying to measure the quality of scholarly work

Subjective Qualitative Measures

Peer Recognition - Word of mouth, invited talks

Classes - lectures and assigned reading

Review articles & Textbooks

Objective quantitative Measures

Journal Citation Counts - Number of times an article is cited in other articles

Journal Impact Factor - number of times all articles in a journal are cited in other journals

Altmetrics attempts to use online activity to measure impact, buzz, word of mouth for scientific information and it includes new ways to measure usage at the citation level.

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Counter vs ALM

Counter statistics measure how your institution uses its subscriptions.

AltMetrics measures how the world uses scholarly information and what they think of it.

Two Measures

New ways to measure mentions of scholarly information on Social Media

New ways to measure usage at the citation level

AltMetrics Tries to Measure

Viewed - HTML views & downloads

Discussed - journal comments, science blogs, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and other social media

Saved - Mendeley, CiteULike and other social bookmarks

Cited - citations in the scholarly literature, tracked by Web of Science, Scopus, CrossRef and others

Recommended - for example Computing Reviews & Faculty of 1000

• ImpactStory [3] and the Public Library of Science[4]

AltMetrics - More than ArticlesTraditional articles & books

Objects in papers - figures, graphs, pictures

Software Tools - GitHub

Datasets - Dryad or figshare

Molecular structures

algorithms

Slideshows - SlideShare

Grants

Patents

Mentions in popular Media, blogs and Social media

More

AltMetrics - MeasuresStill more valuable sources to cover - classes, seminars, lectures, posters, journal clubs and more.

Aggregation is difficult - data in many formats, stored in different ways, in many places, some not accessible (NISO standard being developed).

Author names are not standard and multiple copies of media under different names - ORCID, Data One, BioShare

Many covered sources have open APIs or special arrangements made to access their data

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AltMetrics - Who Does ItPlum Analytics - Service provider with API. Profile page and analytics. Say the cover more Metric sources than anyone else

Impact Story - Displays data in a CV like format. Could become the Linked-In for Scientists. Has API.

PLOS - One of the first publishers to use article level metrics. One of the current leaders. Has API.

Altmetric.com - Service provider with API for publishers, bibliographic websites and more. also offer bookmarklet.

AltMetrics - Benefits

Reader - way to identify new, interesting current works and people

Authors - way to get recognition for work besides articles

Publishers - way to measure “success” of publications and to identify new authors and topics and more information for citation page

Grantors & Universities - may become an additional metrics to use for grants, hiring and promotion, but not yet

Bibliographic Databases - Another information element to display with the citation

AltMetrics - ProblemsBuzz Can Be Manipulated - Promoting your work is frowned up by some, will it soon promoting your work will be part of the PhD Curriculum.

Academics, especially scientists, don’t use Social Media like the Public, though they do use some tools. There isn’t enough data to give a balanced picture, though this might be changing.

Jerry Letvin: “the best ideas in science aren’t recognized at first. this type of work (referring to reviews) just reinforces the prevailing view’. How would Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity score altmetricaly if it was published today?

Grantor - “While I think that there are some good tools and interesting strategies out there, to evaluate productivity and impact, they are basically making value judgments but real life is more complex. ‘Success‘ is a difficult quantify and there is a significant amount of luck and unpredictability.” (6)

Over reliance on metrics is natural and inevitable.

AltMetrics - Future

Combining different types of measures may lead to more accuracy - like chemotherapy Discovery tools for readers

more sources, better algorithms, sentiment analysis

Applied science may get a boost over theoretical

Might influence scientists to use more social media

Almetrics deployed inside institution to identify what buzz is

Over reliance on almetrics is inevitable

AltMetrics - Library’s roleBecome the expert at your institution

help readers learn how to use altmetrics to identify what/who is new and interesting

Identify media to add to your library’s collection

Measure what the buzz is inside your institution

Measure what is being said about your institution on the web

Work more closely with other groups in your institution who use social metrics

If you find value in altmetrics tell publishers to add them

AltMetrics

Bruce AntelmanThinkLoudbruce @ thinkloud.com

Capturing the Buzz

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