The Many Faces of Altmetrics
Mapping the Social Reach of Research
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.820136
Mike Taylor
@herrison on Twitter…
Research Specialist
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8534-5985
Altmetrics will revolutionize the way that academics view
themselves and their work in the academic context. However,
the increasing requirements to increase accessibility to research
materials places new burdens on academics, publishers and
other bodies in the scholarly community. How well is research
being communicated and reported in society, how do different
disciplines behave and gain influence? Using approaches derived
from altmetrics, we may be able to firstly map the extent of
research's social reach, and begin to compute its social impact.
The many faces
1. Prediction of ultimate citation
2. Measuring / recognizing component re-use /
preparatory work / reproducibility
3. Hidden impact ( impact without citation )
4. Real-time filtering / real-time evaluation
5. Platform / publisher / institution comparison
6. Measuring social reach / estimating social
impact
Altmetrics is a very rich environment
Which is why I favour small, low-judgment
buckets of data classes:
• Social activity
• Component re-use
• Scholarly commentary
• Scholarly activity
• Mass media
Faces / buckets
Prediction
Social
activity
Scholarly
activity
x
x
Scholarly
comment
Mass-media Re-use
Re-use
x
Hidden
impact
x
x
Real-time
filtering
x
x
Comparison
x
x
Social reach
x
x
x
x
x
x
Guesswork that needs verification and data!
The more data we can see
Data from altmetric.com
(c.100 articles since
pubdate -2)
• The bigger the picture
Using PHP.
And Excel :-D
scholarly activity (mean)
scholarly comment (mean)
log(social activity (mean))
mas media (mean)
Moving towards social reach
• Used to be end points – moment of publishing
to citation
• Altmetric data points give us some insight into
what’s going on before and after this end
points
• But it’s very limited
• Social reach needs more data points – bigger
picture
More data points, more buckets!
There is a lot of potential data missing:
• Mass media (citation practice and providing
links in PR is AWFUL)
• Governmental documents / think-tank
documents (citation practice is even worse!)
• Tertiary (et al) activity, commentary, etc
• Geo-location
• Moving away from academic focus
Faces / buckets
Prediction
Social
activity
Scholarly
activity
x
x
Scholarly
comment
Massmedia
x
x
Real-time
filtering
x
x
Comparison
x
x
Social reach
x
Patents
Governm
ent /
legislative
Memes
Valuefree
chatter
x
Re-use
Hidden
impact
Re-use
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Guesswork that needs verification and data!
Not all buckets are equal
• Advocating for much more data – and
aggressive action to capture more data – this
is both a technical and communications issue
• Advocating more focus when we define our
purpose
• Not advocating using thousands of inane
comments to predict citation rate (for
example)
Faces / buckets
Guesswork that needs verification and data!
The more data we can see…
• …The bigger the picture
• The richer the view of where research is
reaching
• Vitally important for the success of public
funding / OA / comparing platforms
• Contextualizing investment in research
• Social statements
Broad conclusion
Altmetrics gives us the possibility of
understanding the social impact of research
• Firstly, by allowing us to measure social reach,
by both breadth and depth
• Secondly, providing evidence for meme
networks, enabling context and modeling,
using taxonomies / folksonomies
• Thirdly … just what is social impact anyway?
End note: what is social impact?
• Vaccination: apparently trivial to compute –
sick days have a value (although criticized)
• Theoretical work? % of success, outcomes
from earlier work?
• Research into Shakespeare – contribution to
tourism?
• Economics? Well… if they can’t do it…