Altmetrics: painting a broader picture of impact

Paul Groth @pgroth

Web & Media GroupDepartment of Computer ScienceThe Network InstituteVU University Amsterdamhttp://www.few.vu.nl/~pgroth

Altmetrics: building a broader picture of impact

#APE2014

NIH Data Book – (http://report.nih.gov/ndb/index.aspx) Data provided by the Division of Information Services, Reporting Branch

Research Project Grants Applications, awards, and success rates

Metrics: Do metrics matter?Nature 2010http://doi.org/10.1038/465860a

"Outside letters basically trump everything," says Robert Simoni, chairman of the biology department at Stanford University in California.

“Imagine how the academic appointment process might change if search and review committees had access—within an appropriately tagged or linked online CV, for example, or via the ORCID system—to information about the specific contributions made by a candidate to each of his/her works, including contributions that might not otherwise have qualified for ‘authorship’ status?”

Point of view: Faculty appointments and the record of scholarshipAmy Brandhttp://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00452

Point of view: Faculty appointments and the record of scholarshipAmy Brandhttp://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00452

Slide 3: http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/files/2013/10/Brand.pptx

Opportunities• Individuals and institutions need better

tools for curating and networking their own record of scholarship

• Institutions need more information about scholarly contribution

• ALMs that reliably differentiate sources of input (general; academic; expert; etc.) would be more useful”

ENTER ALTMETRICS

Altmetrics is the study and use of scholarly impact measures based on activity in online tools and environments.

http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048753

http://blog.peerj.com/post/65345738206/changing-the-currency-of-science-to-solve-our-greatest

Thanks Ian Mulvany

ALTMETRICS AS MEASURES OF IMPACT?

“It took approximately a generation (20 years) for bibliographic citation analysis to achieve acceptability as a measure of academic impact."

(Vaughan and Shaw, 2003)

The Research is Happening

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(Birkholtz et al. 2013)

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http://ploscollections.org/altmetricshttp://asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-13/AprMay13_Piwowar.html

http://www.cwts.nl/pdf/CWTS-WP-2013-003.pdf

http://www.slideshare.net/paulwouters1/issi2013-wg-pw

Bottom Line: use altmetrics as evidence in a larger story

Examples

23

Published AND discussed AND cited

24

Summary: a broader view• Different research artifacts

– papers, preprints, slides, videos, code, data

• Different measures– usage, mentions, views, sharing

• Different stories– progress so far, workshop impact,

outreach

Conclusion• Altmetrics is still developing

– But useful today• Allows to build a broader picture of

impact– Using a variety of Artifacts & Measures

• Final thought: research artifacts exist in a network, we’re starting to connect it

ThanksCollaborators: Peter van den Besselaar, Julie Birkholz, Frank van Harmelen, Shenghui Wang, Rinke Hoekstra, Thomas Gurney, Mike Taylor, Anita de Waard, Jason Priem, Dario Taraborelli, Cameron Neylon, Ian Mulvany