1. www.know-center.atIntroduction to Altmetrics @PeterKraker
Know-Center/Panton Fellowfunded within the Austrian Competence
Center Programme
2. Why Metrics?2@PeterKraker
3. One of the diseases of this age is the multiplicity of
books; they doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to
digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and
brought forth into the world. Attributed to Barnaby Rich in 1613
(Price 1963)3@PeterKraker
4. Information Overload in Science Information overload is NOT
a contemporary problem in science Science has been growing
exponentially for the last 400 years (Price 1961, 1963) Number of
papers (Larsen/von Ins 2010) Number of researchers (NSB
2010)Instruments to deal with the overload Journals and conferences
Peer review 4Quantitative measures Price (1963)
5. Pathways through Science Science Citation Index (Garfield
1955) Web of ScienceAn index of incoming citationsPurpose Discovery
of literature that is not linked thematicallyIncreased
collaboration between researchers Evaluation of science5Garfield
(1964)
6. Citation-based MetricsImpact Factorh-Index 6
7. Criticisms of Citation-based Metrics Citations take very
long to appear in meaningful quantitiesMetrics are dependent on the
corpus that is used for calculationA single indicator is not
sufficient to assess impact7
8. Setting the Stage for Alternative Metrics Increased use of
online services in the scientific community E-Journals and
pre-print/data archives Collaborative reference management systems
(Micro-)blogs & social networksSeeing academic literature
through the eyes of the readers (Rowlands & Nicholas 2007)Usage
data (downloads, readership) Links, likes and shares 8
9. Altmetrics Altmetrics: alternative metrics based on data
generated in online systemsPromises of altmetrics Assess
publications quicker and on a broader scale Consider all outputs of
researchThe altmetrics manifesto: http://altmetrics.org9
10. Examples for Altmetrics PLOS Article-level
MetricsAltmetric.comImpactStory10
11. Problems of Altmetrics Intention unknown: What does it mean
to download/save/tweet a paper? What does it mean to aggregate
these numbers?Altmetrics are prone to sample biases (Bollen &
van de Sompel 2008, Kraker et al. 2013) There is a need for a
better understanding of altmetrics Altmetrics data needs to be open
and reproducible11
12. The Untapped Potential: Altmetrics for Discovery12Bollen et
al. (2009)http://labs.mendeley.com/headstart
13. References Bollen, J., & Sompel, H. Van De. (2008).
Usage Impact Factor The : Effects of Sample Characteristics on
Usage-Based Impact Metrics. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science, 59(1998), 136149. Kraker, P., Jack, K.,
Schlgl, C., Trattner, C., & Lindstaedt, S. (2013). Head Start:
Improving Academic Literature Search with Overview Visualizations
based on Readership Statistics. In Web Science 2013. National
Science Board. (2010). Science and Engineering Labor Force. Science
and Engineering Indicators (Vol. 22 Suppl 1). National Science
Foundation. Larsen, P. O., & von Ins, M. (2010). The rate of
growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage
provided by Science Citation Index. Scientometrics, 84(3), 575603.
Price, D.(1961). Science since Babylon. Yale University Press.
Price, D. (1963). Little science, big science. Columbia Univ.
Press.13
14. Thank You For Your Attention!Questions?Peter Kraker
Know-Center Inffeldgasse 13 8010 Graz Austria
[email protected] http://twitter.com/PeterKraker
http://science20.wordpress.com14