Altmetrics Sara Mitha and Avenal Finlayson

Altmetrics is … O Hot topic O Big buzz word O Trending

What is it? O New metrics O Alternative metrics O Attention metrics O indicate a scholar’s visibility on the web.

Formally defined O “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

Another O “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 Impact Peer Review Altmetrics Captures Mentions Social Media Citations Usage Downloads Views Clicks

Citations Traditionally, 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.comPlumX

Data sources O Repositories – OA, code source, data O Presentation sharing sites O Scholarly bookmarking sites O Social media O 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

O Altmetric.com creates an aggregate metric, called the Altmetric score, which is displayed as …

The donut Altmetrics.com

Bookmarklet O Free bookmarklet O allows you to view article-level metrics for the articles you read online O 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 story O 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

O Owned by Ebsco O Tracks over 2 dozen research outputs/objects/products O Provides custom reports which track researcher’s productivity O Marketed to universities and research institutions (subscription)

The plumprint

Mendeley O Bibliographic and collaboration software

Would you trust a donut? O Gamed / artifically increased by Spam O 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 metrics O Uncovers the value of all types of scholarly products/objects eg. datasets, slides O Facilitates re-use for a higher altmetric score O Encourages public engagement

Research visibility O Get a unique identifier O Include altmetrics on your CV O Share your research widely O Experiment with altmetrics tools O Possibilities for funding

Important points O 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 you Brigham, T. J An Introduction to Altmetrics. Medical Reference Services Quarterly 33(4): Available: Galligan, F. and Dyas-Correia, S Altmetrics: Rethinking the way we measure. Serials Review 39(1): Available: Liu, J. and Adie, E Five challenges in altmetrics: A toolmaker's perspective. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 39(4): Available: Mounce, R Open access and altmetrics: Distinct but complementary. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 39(4): Available: Rathemacher, Andrée J Article-level metrics and altmetrics: new ways to measure the impact of your research. Available: Tananbaum, G Article-level metrics: a SPARC primer. Available:

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 Factor O 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