altmetrics as indicators of public impact
DESCRIPTION
Scholarly citations can be traced all the way back to the 15th century, but in the 21st century the internet, social media and the open access movement have made it easier than ever before for the public to engage with scholarly outputs. Altmetrics provide a measure of public engagement with web-native scholarship. They can be embedded into publishing platforms and institutional repositories as article-level metrics, and they provide evidence of impact for open access mandates. Three leading altmetrics aggregators are discussed: Altmetric.com; ImpactStory.org; PlumAnalytics.com. An institutional systems approach is recommended to mitigate the "pond-mentality" of the growing number of sources that provide measures of impact for research output. Research profiling systems are able to harvest most of these ponds and so save time for the researcher and research manager. In addition, national profiling systems would leverage economies of scale to increase the visibility and impact of all players, making it easier for potential investors and collaborators to find research partners. Altmetricians are challenged to develop a metric that measures the openness of a research entity.TRANSCRIPT
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetrics as indicators of public impact
Pat Loria, Charles Sturt University LibraryOpen Access and Research ConferenceQUT, Brisbane Australia, 31 Oct – 1 Nov 2013
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Scholarly citation timeline
1450
Printing Press
1498
Endnotes in Richard White’s
Histories [of Britain]
1560
In-text citations in Pasquier’s
Recherches de la France
1665
First scientific journal
Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society
1696
Scholarly footnotes in Bayle's
Historical and Critical Dictionary
1700-1828
Various controversies and debates documented
over content, purpose and use of citations
1906
Chicago Manual of Style
1950
Development of citation indexing
(Eugene Garfield)
2004
Facebook & Google Scholar
2006
Voltaire (1744): "the empty, sterile science of facts and dates"
2010-2013 Various controversies and debates over
use and value of citations via social media
Scholarly communication uses available communication systems
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
The rise of social media1
• 2010 Barack Obama on Facebook, Twitter & MySpace• 2013 Facebook & YouTube grow to over 1 billion users each• 2013 Twitter 500 million users, LinkedIn 225 million users• 17 million faculty members and graduate students in the world2
1. http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html2. http://www.richardprice.io/post/12855561694/the-number-of-academics-and-graduate-students-in-the
1997
Blogging
1999
Friends Reunited (UK)
2001
Wikipedia
2002
Friendster (US)
2003
2004
Facebook, MySpace, Flickr,
Podcasting
2005
YouTube
2006
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Research impact matrix
Scholarly
Public
Government IndustryImpact
Traditional Citations Social & Mainstream Media
Public Policy Research & Development
Total research impact is measured across all sectors by metrics and impact narrative
17 million potential users 3 billion potential users
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetrics as indicators of public impact
• “Altmetrics” coined by Jason Priem, cofounder of ImpactStory.org• Altmetrics aggregate online impact of web-native scholarship• Most aggregators have adopted an open source business model• Altmetrics can be embedded into profiles, repositories & other systems• Altmetrics begin accruing much faster than traditional metrics• Include non-traditional outputs (datasets, software, slides, websites)• Facilitate qualitative exploration of sources and sentiment of impact• Altmetrics complement traditional metrics and research evaluation• Provide evidence of public engagement with scholarly output
A “researcher’s footprint in the community” ~ Kaitlin Thaney (Mozilla Science Lab)http://www.altmetric.com/blog/thoughts-from-the-fishbowl-plos-alm-workshop-2013/
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetrics push factors
• Evidence of public impact in grant applications and funding reports• Supporting evidence for employment, promotion and performance• Broader understanding of impact landscape for research managers• Compliment other impact metrics in repositories and public profiles• Add to evidence base for government impact evaluation exercises• Provide supporting evidence that open access mandates are
working
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetrics pull factors
• Researchers who want to gauge extent of public interest in their work
• Research groups who want to know what is creating public interest• Repository managers to know how research output is being used• Research managers to know how their institution is being discussed• Funding agencies and research partners interested in public impact• Anyone interested in seeing the impact of publicly-funded research
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetric.com bookmarklethttp://www.youtube.com/v/_Alsg7AyrhM
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetrics for publishers and repositorieshttps://www.youtube.com/v/XE8hDetxEt0#t=18
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetric.com Explorer
Free to librarians!
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetric.com embeddable badges
Examples of embeddable badges:
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetric for Scopus
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetric.com API (example from Nature.com)
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
ImpactStory.org
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
ImpactStory.org
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
ImpactStory.org
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
PlumAnalytics.com PlumX
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Can also search by Groups & Individuals
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Future of altmetrics?
• Due to growing use of social media to share research outputs, altmetrics will continue gaining prominence in measuring impact
• Aggregators and users will continue collaborating to refine altmetrics web apps and develop more group and institutional reporting tools
• Standards need to be developed on collection and use of altmetrics, e.g. NISO to Develop Standards for Altmetrics
• Altmetrics need to be incorporated into a systems approach to tracking and recording research impact!
Under cooperative games, players can coordinate their strategies and share the payoff
(John C.S. Lui, Chinese University of Hong Kong) http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~cslui/CSC6480/cooperative_game.pdf
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Pond mentality
Researcher
Institutional Repositories
Citation Databases
Publishing Platforms
Social Research Networks
Altmetrics
Impact Narratives
Is it worth the time of the researcher or the research manager?
We need to work smart, not hard, when it comes to reporting impact
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Systems approach to altmetrics
• Altmetrics can be harvested by third-party systems:• Institutional repositories
• Research information management systems
• Research profiling systems
• Open Access and commercial publishers
• Altmetrics are more useful in concert with:• Other impact metrics
• Narrative impact data
• A system that pulls everything together and generates internal/external reports
• A system that can be set up to export data to a public profiling system
• A system that saves the time of researchers and research management staff
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Altmetrics in a national profiling system?
• Cooperation will increase visibility and impact for all players• Aim is to increase cooperation, collaboration and productivity• Reporting by field, region, institution, program, group & individual• Would aggregate data from ponds and facilitate impact narrative
Image: http://www.theclimatecup.eu/articles-mostra-2279-eng-competition.htm Image: http://www.laurelfelt.org/cooperation/
Create capacity not competition(Pat Loria)
Research visibility promises better returns than research evaluation!
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
In the meantime...
• Faculty liaison librarians can instruct researchers in altmetrics• Researchers should think about having a research impact strategy• Research managers should take deeper and broader view of impact• Funding agencies to contemplate impact statement in final reports• Research evaluation exercises should broaden definition of impact• Altmetricians could develop metrics to measure research openness
O-index = ??
TO APPLY PAGE STYLESRIGHT CLICK YOUR PAGE>LAYOUT
DIVISION OF LIBRARY SERVICES
Thank You
Twitter: @pat_loriaEmail: [email protected]