Altmetrics

Sara Mitha and Avenal Finlayson

Altmetrics is …OHot topicOBig buzz wordOTrending

What is it?ONew metricsOAlternative metricsOAttention metrics Oindicate a scholar’s visibility

on the web

.

Formally definedO “Altmetrics are new

measurements for the impact of scholarly content based on how far and wide it travels through the social web (like Twitter), social bookmarking (CiteULike) and collaboration tools (Mendeley)…”

Galagan, F 2012

AnotherO “the creation and study of new

metrics based on the social web for analysing and informing scholarship….allowing scholars to create a more complete picture of how their work is being assessed and used from the moment of publication - and sometimes years before traditional metrics would show any impact”

Corbett in Rathermacher, 2014

Research Impact

ImpactPeer Review

Altmetrics• Captures• Mentions• Social

Media

Citations

Usage• Downloads• Views• Clicks

CitationsTraditionally, the most common metric for evaluating research impact is the number of times a research article is cited by other articles. This metric is sometimes represented by the raw count of citations received by the specific article in question.

The number of citations received by the journal that published the article is summarised using a formula called the journal impact factor.

Publishing and citation behaviour differs between disciplines

O Add SARA historical bit

Altmetrics

Altmetric.com PlumX

Data sourcesO Repositories – OA, code source, data O Presentation sharing sitesO Scholarly bookmarking sitesO Social mediaO Grant funding data

How data is collected

O Identifiers - ORCID, DOI, PubMed, Handles and URLs

O text-mining analyses the content of news articles as news is not so reliant on links

O links to research outputs seldom appear in the metadata for sound and video. Tools used for altmetrics lack capability to analyse audio and video content.

Altmetric.com

Altmetric.comO Altmetric.com creates an aggregate

metric, called the Altmetric score, which is displayed as …

The donut

Altmetrics.com

BookmarkletO Free bookmarkletO allows you to view article-level metrics for

the articles you read onlineO To get started, drag and drop the

bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar in your web browser

O Works for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.  O Due to some limitations, the bookmarklet

may not work for every article. Altmetric.com

Altmetric it!

Impact storyO Impact Story tracks the impact of articles,

datasets, software, videos, presentations and more

O To get started, create an author profile and add your articles to your profile.

O You can do this by importing articles from Google Scholar, ORCID or by entering a PMID, digital object identifier (DOI) or URL

O Subscripiton of $60 pa

http://guides.lib.unc.edu/c.php?g=9248&p=45816

O Owned by EbscoO Tracks over 2 dozen research

outputs/objects/productsO Provides custom reports which track

researcher’s productivityO Marketed to universities and research

institutions (subscription)

The plumprint

MendeleyO Bibliographic and

collaboration software

Would you trust a donut?

O Gamed / artifically increased by SpamO Altmetrics need to be placed in context in

order to make sense O Multiple versions of articles with different

URLs and identifiers eg. Pubmed version of article (PUBMD ID) and at publisher’s website (DOI) can dilute the altmetrics for the item

O Bias

Altmetrics for institutions

O Add value to the library resources and institutional repositories.

O Can enhance content of the IR and persuade researchers to submit to the IR

O Track article level metrics for institutional research outputs, at faculty or departmental level showing a richer picture of their online research impact.

Altmetrics for publishers

O Showcase research impact to authors and readers

O Monitor, search and measure all of the conversations about a journal article, as well as those published by competitors.

Altmetrics for researchers

O View attention paid to online articles and monitor online research impact

O Current and immediate metricsO Uncovers the value of all types of scholarly

products/objects eg. datasets, slidesO Facilitates re-use for a higher altmetric

scoreO Encourages public engagement

Research visibilityO Get a unique identifierO Include altmetrics on your CVO Share your research widelyO Experiment with altmetrics tools O Possibilities for funding

Important pointsO Open Access - Accurate altmetrics rely on

the almetric tools being able to access the data

O Altmetrics must supplement rather than replace traditional evaluation

Thank youBrigham, T. J. 2014. An Introduction to Altmetrics. Medical Reference Services Quarterly 33(4): 438-447. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2014.957093

Galligan, F. and Dyas-Correia, S. 2013. Altmetrics: Rethinking the way we measure. Serials Review 39(1): 56-61. Available: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009879131300004X

Liu, J. and Adie, E. 2013. Five challenges in altmetrics: A toolmaker's perspective. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 39(4): 31-34. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bult.2013.1720390410 Mounce, R. 2013. Open access and altmetrics: Distinct but complementary. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 39(4): 14-17. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bult.2013.1720390406 Rathemacher, Andrée J. 2014. Article-level metrics and altmetrics: new ways to measure the impact of your research. Available: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-LbmAB0uzHGTDJKbnlUOWhzaUk

Tananbaum, G. 2013. Article-level metrics: a SPARC primer. Available: http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/sparc-alm-primer.pdf

Journal Impact Factor

JIF

O Data from the Web of Science

O Calculated on the number of citations to a given journal during the previous 2 years (A) divided by the number of research and review articles published by that journal during the same period (B):

A / B = Impact FactorO Paid subscription

SCImago Journal Ranking

SJR O Is based on information in the Scopus database (Elsevier) over a 3 year period

O Was developed using the Google PageRank algorithm

O Free

Eigenfactor Score

EI O Based on Web of Science data

O Calculated over five years O Highly cited journals are

weighted