introduction to bilbliometrics and altmetrics

Prof Chris Oliver @CyclingSurgeon

“The Buzz”

What should I read?

What’s important?

How is my research used?

InterviewsSurveys

ObservationsBibliometrics

Webometrics

Scientists do more than write

papers….

Measuring Impact?

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

“It took approximately a generation for

bibliographic citation analysis to achieve

acceptability as a measure of academic impact."

Traces on the web

Web Resources• Google• ResearchGate• Mendeley• LinkedIn• Acadaemia.edu• Orcid• Altmetrics.com• Pure (CRIS)• Edinburgh Research Explorer

• How to measure academic impact?

• New Filters? • What kind of impact?• Level of aggregation?• Analysis by going for

scale?

altmetrics is the creation and study of new metrics based on

the Social Web for analyzing, and informing

scholarship

Altmetrics tries to Measure

Viewed - HTML views & downloads

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

Saved - Mendeley, CiteULike and other social bookmarks

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

Recommended - resources

Altmetrics = > Articles• Traditional articles & books• Objects in papers, figures, graphs, pictures• Software Tools• Datasets• Molecular structures, art• Algorithms• Slideshows - SlideShare• Grants, Patents• Mentions popular media, blogs & Social media

Who Does It?• Plum Analytics • Impact Story• PLOS• Altmetric.com - Service provider

with API for publishers, bibliographic websites, offer bookmarklet.

Quality?Impact?Retraction?Self Citation?

Altmetric.com

Altmetric.com

Benefits• Reader - new interesting current works & people

• Authors - recognition besides articles

• Publishers - measure “success” of publication, new authors, topics, more information for citation page

• Grantors & Universities - additional metrics to use for grants, hiring and promotion, but not yet!

• Bibliographic Databases - Another information element to display with the citation

Problems• Missing materials

• Buzz can be manipulated - will it become part of the PhD Curriculum?

• Academics don’t use Social Media like the Public - unbalanced

• Over reliance• Rank employees• How would Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity score

altmetricaly if it was published today?

Altmetric Future• Combining different types of measures may lead to more

accuracy

• More sources, better algorithms

• Might influence scientists to use more social media

• Altmetrics deployed inside institution to identify what buzz is

• Funding

Prof Chris Oliver @CyclingSurgeon

“The Buzz”