AN INTRODUCTION TO ALTMETRICS Sarah Goodier May 2016 Who am I? Currently: o Researcher and evaluation advisor on the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project o Work with altmetric tools to investigate the broader impact of
ROER4Ds work Previously: o Scholarly communications officer and researcher at the OpenUCT Initiative o Worked with altmetric tools to investigate the broader impact of both OpenUCTs outputs and several UCT academics outputs What well be covering today: A brief look at the research cycle and measuring
impact using bibliometrics (focus on citations) The rise of Altmetrics (What is it? What does it enable?) What can you do with it? A free tool you can use The Research Cycle Conceptualisation Translation Data Collection
Engagement Data Analysis Findings Traditional Scholarship Studen t
Literature Reviews Bibliographies Conceptual Frameworks Proposals Conceptualisation Notes Lectures Translation
Presentations Engagement Recorded interviews Data sets Data Collection Images Data Analysis
Reports Audio records Interviews Findings Communit y
Books Journal articles Schola Conference papers Technical papers Measuring impact Studen t
Literature Reviews Bibliographies Conceptual Frameworks Proposals Conceptualisation Notes Lectures Translation
Presentations Engagement Recorded interviews Data sets Data Collection Images
Data Analysis Reports Audio records Interviews Findings Communit y
Bibliometrics : CITATIONS Books Journal articles Schola Conference papers Technical papers
Traditional Impact Factor Metrics that impute reputation and impact for the journal - based on how frequently articles published in that journal are cited in other published articles. o accrue to the journal o take time (as citing journal /paper has to be published) Originated in 1960s (Garfield)
Beasley, Beyond the Impact Factor, Feb 2014 ISI or Web of Science impact factor Published annually in the Journal Citation Reports (which lags by a year, i.e. the most recent JCR data is for 2014/15) # of citations to articles in ABC Journal x during year # of articles published in ABC Journal x in past two years
1.0 means that, on average, the articles published in ABC Journal within the past two years have been cited one time Beasley, Beyond the Impact Factor, Feb 2014 How the Impact Factor works One article can make a huge difference to the IF for the whole journal
o EG Shelx cited 32k, raised IF from 2 to 50 Measures only journal & year o Does not differentiate content cited Subject areas vary enormously Extensive criticism of the IF Hardcastle 2013 Other Impact Measures:
H-index: authors, not articles The H-index measures the maximum number of papers N you have, all of which have at least N citations. So if you have 3 papers with at least 3 citations, but you dont have 4 papers
with at least 4 citations then your Hindex is 3. Bateman, A. (2012, October 19). Why I love the Citations Citations are the norm but have been criticised for o Delays (citation latency) o Not measuring quality (cited because it is wrong, objectionable) o Measuring only one research output (research article) o Measuring only scholar-scholar (not scholar- society) o Easy to game
Nevertheless, they count o Especially for scholar-scholar The rise of academic online services and social media1 2001 Wikipedi a 1997
Blogging 1999 Friends Reunited (UK) 2003 LinkedIn
2002 Friendster (US) 2005 YouTube 2004 Facebook, MySpace,
Flickr, Podcasting 2006 Twitter 17 million faculty members and graduate students in the world2 1. http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html 2. http://www.richardprice.io/post/12855561694/the-number-of-academics-and-graduatestudents-in-the
From Pat Loria, Altmetrics as indicators of public impact, 2013 Broader measures of impact http://altmetrics.org/ manifesto/ Defining Altmetrics About new ways of measuring impact and influence of
research o Social media o Scholar- community as well as o Scholar- scholar About new focus (non-traditional outputs) o From journal article o All research products Defining AltMetrics
Different definitions (a problem) Goals o To be more timely than citations o To measure societal impact o To value all research products Pinowar 2013 Altmetrics is a good idea but bad name, we would like to propose influmetrics Rousseau, R., & Ye, F.Y. (2013. Source: S Haustein 2013
Rethinking Impact New practices, new measures Studen t So dia e
lm a i c ivity t c a e & onlin
Altmetrics Social m edia & onl ine act ivit y Literature Reviews
Conceptual Frameworks Bibliographies Proposals Conceptualisation Notes Recorded interviews
Lectures Translation Presentations Engagement Data sets Data Collection
Images Data Analysis Reports Audio records ne act
ivit y Interviews Books Journal articles Communit y
So cia lm edi a & online activity Schola
Conference papers Technical papers &o nli Findings dia e lm
a i c So New Practices online reader / user behaviour network interactions with content online content management How could you use this information?
Altmetrics explainer video: https:// youtu.be/M6XawJ7-880 Issues Ifs and buts a bias towards Journal articles Meaning What can you tell from the numbers?
What does a metric say about quality of the work? What does it tell one about the researcher? Better to ask: what does it mean to me? Find and talk about NB narratives Uneven Disciplinary bias o 30-40% of recent biomedical papers have Altmetric attention o Less than 10% of social sciences
Global geo bias o Tools have bias, data sources are those popular in USA and Europe E Adie , 2013 Altmetric.com Global divides: social media tools https://speakerdeck.com/jalperin/altmetrics-propagating-global-inequality
Global divides: social media tools https://speakerdeck.com/jalperin/altmetrics-propagating-global-inequality Nascent Studies needed o to analyse who, why, how people use various platforms o Differences and biases ito disciplines, topics, output types & source, author age etc
Cannot determine audience by platform o Need studies to differentiate audiences and types/ levels of engagement Need transparency in data aggregation S Haustein, 2013 TOOLS
Altmetrics tools Altmetric o An Elsevier product name o Adopted by Springer, Nature Publishing Group, Scopus, Biomed Central Impact Story o Open source altmetric tool. o Draws on variety of social and scholarly data sources. Plum Analytics o Owned by Ebsco, focuses on metrics for articles, chapters, datasets,
presentations, source code. PLOS o has developed its own (freely available) code for deriving metrics A Free & Easy-to-use Tool Bookmarklet What is Altmetric.com?
Altmetric tracks what people are saying about papers online on behalf of institutions, publishers, authors, libraries and institutions http://www.altmetric.com/ The bookmarklet is a simple browser tool that lets you instantly get article level metrics for any recent paper, for free The Bookmarklet To get started:
go to http://www.altmetric.com Mouse over Products Click on Bookmarklet The bookmarklet is available for the browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Safari Very easy to install: just grab the Altmetric it! button and
drag it to your bookmarks bar Very easy to install: just grab the Altmetric it! button and drag it to your bookmarks bar Once installed, the Altmetric it! button will appear in your bookmarks bar You can use the bookmarklet: On any article that has a Digital Object Identifier
(DOI) e.g. doi: 10.1002/berj.3000 You can use the bookmarklet: WHAT IS A DOI? On any article that has a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) e.g. doi: 10.1002/berj.3000 A DOI is:
a unique alphanumeric string assigned to a digital object, such as an electronic journal, article, report, or thesis a stable, persistent link to the fulltext of an electronic item on the Internet DOIs don't change over time (URLs can), even if the item moves to a new location. DOI
URL 1 URL 2 Information on DOIs from CrossRef: http://help.crossref.org/#what_is_a_doi You can use the bookmarklet: On any article that has a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) e.g. doi: 10.1002/berj.3000
To use the bookmarklet: Navigate to any recent article To use the bookmarlet: Click on the Altmetric it! button in your bookmarks bar You will see the Altmetric.com results appear in the top right hand corner of your screen: The Altmetric.com results:
The Altmetric donut colour-coded according to which sources have mentioned the article The Altmetric.com results:
The Altmetric score Quantitative measure of attention for the paper Considers: Volume (how many people interact with it), Sources (what medium its shared in) Authors (who interacts with it)
of that attention The Altmetric.com results: Where the article is being shared/mentioned and how many times The Altmetric.com results:
More details are available This includes: A summary Including demographic info of those interacting This includes: A summary Including demographic info of those interacting
This includes: Tweets This includes: Some context of the Altmetric score Nascent Field Growing area of research National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is looking into standards around Altmetrics;
Draft looking at Altmetrics Definitions and Use Cases was recently open for public comment Watch this space! How might these (alt)metrics be useful to you in showing the reach and impact of your work? Thank you Sarah Goodier @SarahGoodier
[email protected] Several slides modified from altmetrics presentation by Laura Czerniewicz (CC-BY-SA) Some additional things to note: Sources of the data measured fall into 4 major categories: o o o o
Social media Online reference manager download counts Publisher and PubMed Central download counts Mainstream media data For more information and to keep up to date with the latest on Altmetric.com and their bookmarklet: See Altmetric.coms blog post on their bookmarklet:
http://altmetric.com/blog/getting-scholarly-conver sations-instantly-altmetric-it / Follow the blog: http://altmetric.com/blog/ Follow Altmetric.com on Twitter: @Altmetric
