What are they good for?How publishers and librarians can help researchers

Paul Groth (@pgroth)VU University Amsterdamhttp://www.few.vu.nl/~pgroth

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

(Vaughan and Shaw, 2003)

What altmetrics are not good at

(Wouters & Costas, 2012)

“The main problem is that none of the new tools we reviewed meet crucial requirements for data quality and indicator construction. This prevents them from currently being usable in the context of research evaluation and assessment.”

(Wouters & Costas, 2012)

The Research is Happening

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(Birkholtz et al. 2013)

(Fausto et al 2012)

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

WHY LOOK AT ALTMETRICS NOW?

Steve

Stories!

(Priem et al. 2012)

Support reuse of content

Surface statistics

You have high quality measures

Conclusion

• Altmetrics is still developing– But useful today

• Your content is embedded in a network of content– Show the impact of your researchers

content through associated content

• Help authors tell their stories