SOMETHING WIDGET
THIS WAY COMES
Using Altmetrics to Illustrate the Impact of Open Access
on Graduate Student Research
John Barnett, University of Pittsburgh
Lauren Collister, University of Pittsburgh
Jennifer Chan, University of Colorado at Boulder
TODAY’S LEARNING GOALS
• Understanding the social role of scholars in today’s
climate
• Altmetrics vs. traditional metrics
• Altmetrics tools and services available
• Pitt’s pilot project with Plum Analytics
• Enter the widgets
• Altmetrics as a lead-in to conversations about
scholarly communication
• Discussion
SCHOLARLY
COMMUNICATIONS AT
Innovation in scholarly communication
Strong advocate of Open Access to research
The library as publisher
Experience with open repositories, open journals,
and open ETDs
• Now developing other research services
•
•
•
•
• Altmetrics and bibliometrics
• Researcher profiling systems
• Stay tuned . . .
THE SOCIAL ROLE OF
SCHOLARS
Altmetrics has the potential to show the impact of
research outside the scholarly community—how it
may be picked up by general/non-specialist
audiences
“I want to reach a wider
audience, not just academics,
especially since a lot of
published articles are not
widely available.”- Sharon
Quinsaat, graduate student,
Sociology
“I think this is an important
aspect of the researcher¹s
role and altmetrics may give
us (for the first time) some
sort of social impact of
research.” – Berenika
Webster, Coordinator of
Assessment, University of
Pittsburgh
THE SOCIABILITY OF
EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS
• Graduate students and ECRs report
•
•
•
•
Writing blog posts about their research and teaching
Publicizing their work on social media
Finding collaborators via social networks & blogs
Sharing papers on Academia.edu,
The problem
Mendeley, etc.
becomes “Scholars
• How do we help them manage
all of these information streams?
need to invest a lot
of time in social
media and
dissemination - time
that could be used
for research!”
DEFINING ALTMETRICS
• Altmetrics = Alternative ways of measuring the use
and impact of scholarship
• Altmetrics combine traditional impact measures
(citation counts) with non-traditional measures
• Altmetrics = ALL METRICS
“Altmetrics are measures of
scholarly impact mined from
activity in online tools and
environments” – Jason Priem,
Co-Founder, ImpactStory
NEW MEASURES
• More comprehensive
• Citations, usage, social
media
• Covers impact of
online behavior
• Because scholars increasingly
work online
• Measures impact immediately
• Because citation counts take years to
appear in literature
“This type of organic,
social, self-configuring
web of connections looks
useful for networking and
for identifying people who
are interested in your
research.” – Bill Price, early
career researcher,
Linguistics
TRADITIONAL vs. NEW
• Traditional measures are also counted
• Complementary to conventional
methods of measuring research impact
• e.g., H-Index
• Not intended to
replace them
“Ultimately, our tools
should use the rich semantic
data from altmetrics to ask
‘how and why?’ as well as
‘how many?’ – Jason Priem,
Dario Taraborelli, Paul Groth,
and Cameron Neylon
“…impact factor and citation
counts are important, but that's
not the only way that information
disseminates, and to ignore less
formal or currently unrecognized
ways of disseminating information
demonstrates lack of foresight.” –
Jim Fitzpatrick, graduate student,
Linguistics
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
ALTMETRICS
• Article-level metrics written about and discussed
beginning in 2009
• “Altmetrics” term coined in 2010
• Rise of social media in 2010s -> “alternative” and
social metrics
• To learn more:
• SPARC “Article-level metrics” http://bit.ly/1kjfmfd
• PLOS “Altmetrics Collection” http://bit.ly/1kBEzM8
CHALLENGES TO ALTMETRICS
• Prestige & tenure are still locked into Journal Impact
Factor
• Apples, oranges, etc.: A “like” is not the same as a
citation
• How old or new is the work? (The recent nature of
social media)
• Copyright concerns and Open Access
• Open Access and the researcher fear of being
scooped
“Researchers must ask if altmetrics really
reflect impact, or just empty buzz.” – Jason
Priem, Dario Taraborelli, Paul Groth,
Cameron Neylon
BENEFITS
• More usage statistics
available, not just
citations
• Widget & metrics
indicate more robust use
• Show impact for early
career faculty & graduate
students
• Good numbers =
potential for further
publishing, research, and
funding
• Ideological importance
"I have had people come
up to me at conferences
and say that they read
some of my papers and
then looked me up on
social media and found
other stuff of mine. I also
think that social media has
increased the amount my
work is cited.“ – Graduate
student in Social Work
Saying that Open Access
to ETDs hurts sales of books
that come from them is
"bullshit, it's a trap.“ –John
Sherer, UNC Press
“I think that social media is
a really important counternarrative to dominant
media institutions.“ –
Robert Lawson, ECR,
Linguistics
ALTMETRICS TOOLS AND
SERVICES
Pitt and PlumX
http://plu.mx/pitt
• Allowing researchers, labs,
departments, institutions to track
real-time impact
• Promoting research, comparing with
peers, connecting with new research
• Traditional citations & newer metrics
•
•
•
•
Scopus
Twitter, Facebook
Wikipedia
Mendeley
ALTMETRICS ADD VALUE
• Plum Analytics gives the IR added value by
addressing Schöpfel (2013)’s recommendations:
 Social media tools
 Federated search & sophisticated discovery tools
 Usage statistics & metrics
• Multimedia supplements to theses
• Print on demand in book format
• Copyright options including Creative
Commons
Schöpfel, Joachim. “Adding Value
to Electronic Theses and
• Preservation
Dissertations in Institutional
Repositories.” D-Lib Magazine 19,
no. 3/4 (March 2013).
doi:10.1045/march2013-schopfel
OUR APPROACH
• Created records for faculty works in DScholarship@Pitt
• Articles, books, book chapters, proceedings
• Scholarly output with standard identifiers
• DOI, ISBN, PubMed ID, official URL, etc.
• Scholarship produced since 2000
ENTER THE WIDGETS
• Infoboxes containing
concise, easy-to-read
altmetrics for scholarly
works
• Embeddable
• Researcher web pages
• Department directories
• Article-level metrics
embedded in
• Article abstract page for
journals we publish
• IR document abstract page
PLUM ANALYTICS WIDGET IN
E-JOURNALS
• Displays altmetrics for
each article
• Adds value to our
published e-Journals
similar to what is
expected from PLoS &
other larger publishers
• Piloted in early 2014 by
the International
Journal of
Telerehabilitation
• Live in all 36 e-journals
PLUM ANALYTICS WIDGET IN DSCHOLARSHIP
• Like all libraries, we struggle with populating
our IR
• But we have nearly 6,000 ETDs . . .
• Plum displays altmetrics for each record
• Indicates long-term usage
• Previously limited to 1-year-only data
• Indicates research usage, sharing, and
“socializing” of scholarship
• May encourage traffic to & deposits in IR
ETDs at PITT
• Master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and
undergraduate honors theses
• Required to be in electronic format for all programs
since December 2004 graduation
• Swanson School of Engineering began using ETDs earlier
• Students can choose to
• Withhold from public view for 1 year (patent pending)
• Embargo only to the Pitt community for 1 to 5 years
• Make available via Open Access immediately
• D-Scholarship@Pitt serves as official repository
WHY ALTMETRICS MATTER
• Demonstrate increased use of research, irrespective
of discipline
• Show increased socialization of research,
irrespective of discipline
• Offer a more holistic view of research dissemination
and use
• Illustrate the impact of Open Access on research
use and socialization
• Open conversations about scholarly
communication practices and the library’s role
ALTMETRICS AS A
CONVERSATION STARTER
• The web has opened up new opportunities and
models for publishing and research sharing (Open
Access, repositories, OERs, textbooks . . .)
• Making your research available may lead to more
collaboration, funding, publishing, etc.
• Copyright infringement and scooping are possible,
but having your work available widely shows you
had the idea first
• Is Journal Impact Factor the best way to indicate
research or researcher quality? (DORA)
• Journal costs are high and can restrict knowledge
creation and sharing
YOUR TURN
 Do you think graduate students might be interested in
altmetrics? Why?
 How would you introduce altmetrics and PlumX to graduate
students?
 What issues do you see arising in the use of altmetrics data for
graduate students? For faculty? For others?
SOURCES
 Ho, Adrian, and Daniel R. Lee. 2010. “Recognizing Opportunities:
Conversational Openings to Promote Positive Scholarly Communication Change.”
College & Research Libraries News 71: 83-87. Accessed June 5, 2014.
http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/2/83.full.
 Priem, Jason, Dario Taraborelli, Paul Groth, and Cameron Neylon. 2010.
“altmetrics: a manifesto.” Last modified Sept. 28, 2011.
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/.
 Schöpfel, Joachim. 2013. “Adding Value to Electronic Theses and Dissertations
in Institutional Repositories.” D-Lib Magazine 19. doi:10.1045/march2013-schopfel.