AltMetrics
Capturing the Buzz
Bruce Antelman
ThinkLoud
bruce @ thinkloud.com
For years scientists
have been trying to
measure the quality of
scholarly work
Subjective Qualitative Measures
Peer Recognition - Word of mouth, invited talks
Classes - lectures and assigned reading
Review articles & Textbooks
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
Altmetrics attempts to use
online activity to measure
impact, buzz, word of
mouth for scientific
information and it includes
new ways to measure
usage at the citation level.
(2)
Counter vs ALM
Counter statistics measure how your institution uses
its subscriptions.
AltMetrics measures how the world uses scholarly
information and what they think of it.
Two Measures
New ways to measure mentions of scholarly
information on Social Media
New ways to measure usage at the citation level
AltMetrics Tries to Measure
Viewed - HTML views & downloads
Discussed - journal comments, science blogs, Wikipedia,
Twitter, Facebook and other social media
Saved - Mendeley, CiteULike and other social bookmarks
Cited - citations in the scholarly literature, tracked by Web of
Science, Scopus, CrossRef and others
Recommended - for example Computing Reviews & Faculty of
1000
•
ImpactStory
[3] and the Public Library of Science[4]
AltMetrics - More than Articles
Traditional articles & books
Objects in papers - figures, graphs, pictures
Software Tools - GitHub
Datasets - Dryad or figshare
Molecular structures
algorithms
Slideshows - SlideShare
Grants
Patents
Mentions in popular Media, blogs and Social media
More
AltMetrics - Measures
Still more valuable sources to cover - classes, seminars,
lectures, posters, journal clubs and more.
Aggregation is difficult - data in many formats, stored in
different ways, in many places, some not accessible
(NISO standard being developed).
Author names are not standard and multiple copies of
media under different names - ORCID, Data One,
BioShare
Many covered sources have open APIs or special
arrangements made to access their data
(5)
AltMetrics - Who Does It
Plum Analytics - Service provider with API. Profile page and
analytics. Say the cover more Metric sources than anyone
else
Impact Story - Displays data in a CV like format. Could
become the Linked-In for Scientists. Has API.
PLOS - One of the first publishers to use article level
metrics. One of the current leaders. Has API.
Altmetric.com - Service provider with API for publishers,
bibliographic websites and more. also offer bookmarklet.
AltMetrics - Benefits
Reader - way to identify new, interesting current works and people
Authors - way to get recognition for work besides articles
Publishers - way to measure “success” of publications and to
identify new authors and topics and more information for citation
page
Grantors & Universities - may become an additional metrics to use
for grants, hiring and promotion, but not yet
Bibliographic Databases - Another information element to display
with the citation
AltMetrics - Problems
Buzz Can Be Manipulated - Promoting your work is frowned up by some, will it soon
promoting your work will be part of the PhD Curriculum.
Academics, especially scientists, don’t use Social Media like the Public, though they
do use some tools. There isn’t enough data to give a balanced picture, though this
might be changing.
Jerry Letvin: “the best ideas in science aren’t recognized at first. this type of work
(referring to reviews) just reinforces the prevailing view’. How would Einstein’s Theory
of Special Relativity score altmetricaly if it was published today?
Grantor - “While I think that there are some good tools and interesting strategies out
there, to evaluate productivity and impact, they are basically making value judgments
but real life is more complex. ‘Success‘ is a difficult quantify and there is a significant
amount of luck and unpredictability.” (6)
Over reliance on metrics is natural and inevitable.
AltMetrics - Future
Combining different types of measures may lead to more
accuracy - like chemotherapy Discovery tools for readers
more sources, better algorithms, sentiment analysis
Applied science may get a boost over theoretical
Might influence scientists to use more social media
Almetrics deployed inside institution to identify what buzz is
Over reliance on almetrics is inevitable
AltMetrics - Library’s role
Become the expert at your institution
help readers learn how to use altmetrics to identify what/who is new
and interesting
Identify media to add to your library’s collection
Measure what the buzz is inside your institution
Measure what is being said about your institution on the web
Work more closely with other groups in your institution who use social
metrics
If you find value in altmetrics tell publishers to add them
AltMetrics
Capturing the Buzz
Bruce Antelman
ThinkLoud
bruce @ thinkloud.com