NISO’s Altmetrics Initiative
Nettie Lagace (@abugseye)ICIS Meeting, UC Davis
February 14, 2014
What is NISO?
• Non-profit industry trade association accredited by ANSI with 150+ members
• Mission of developing and maintaining standards related to information, documentation, discovery and distribution of published materials and media
• Represent US interests to ISO TC46 (Information and Documentation) and also serve as Secretariat for ISO TC46/SC 9 (Identification and Description)
• Responsible for standards like ISSN, DOI, Dublin Core metadata, DAISY digital talking books, OpenURL, SIP, NCIP, MARC records and ISBN (indirectly)
• Volunteer driven organization: 400+ spread out across the world
Premise of “Standards”
• Consensus standards created by a community with various stakeholders
• Trust• Leading to broader acceptance• Standards as plumbing• Standards facilitate trade, commerce and innovation• Standards reduce costs• Standards support better communication and
interoperability across systems
ANSI Standards
• Openness, lack of dominance, balance = everyone affected has a voice
• Notifications, consideration of views and objections
• Consensus votes and appeals• ANSI patent policy, commercial terms and
conditions• Publication and maintenance• Credible & have Integrity
The Altmetrics Project
• Came out of breakout session at (ACM) altmetrics12 meeting in Chicago, June 2012
• Funded by grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation• Premise of grant award: To help facilitate the
adoption of altmetrics, development of community consensus standards can help address limitations and gaps that currently exist
• Identify and prioritize needs and requirements
Why worth funding?
• Scholarly assessment is critical to the overall process– Which projects get funded– Who gets promoted and tenure– Which publications are prominent
• Assessment has been based on citation since the 60s
• Today’s scholars multiple types of interactions with scholarly content are not reflected– Is “non-traditional” scholarly output important too?
Why worth funding?
• In order to move out of “pilot” and “proof-of-concept” phases …
• Altmetrics must coalesce around commonly understood definitions, calculations and data sharing practices
• Altmetrics must be able to be audited • Organizations who want to apply metrics will
need to understand them and ensure consistent application and meaning across the community
What’s to Standardize?
• Field is too new … no existing practice to build on• Standards should not be “invented” / codified• A diversion from the real work that needs to be
done– No community practice: administrators, granting orgs
etc. need accepted, trustworthy, verifiable info– This project is not taking place overnight; two stages
for a reason– NISO open process invites engagement from all
A few Questions about Altmetrics
• What gets measured (counted)?• What are criteria for assessing quality of these
measures?• How granular should the metrics be to enable
computation and analysis?• What period(s) should the metrics cover?• What technical infrastructure is necessary to
enable the exchange of the metrics data?
2 Phases
• Phase 1: Hold meetings of stakeholders to define a high-level list of issues– October 2013, San Francisco– December 2013, Washington, DC– January 2014, Philadelphia– Public Webinars– White paper output, public presentations, public feedback
• Phase 2: Create Working Group within NISO structure, to create recommended practice(s) and/or standard(s)– Education/training efforts to ensure implementation
• Final report to Sloan due November 2015
niso.org
Linked from niso.org
Steering Committee
• Euan Adie, Altmetric• Amy Brand, Harvard University• Mike Buschman, Plum Analytics• Todd Carpenter, NISO• Martin Fenner, Public Library of Science (PLoS) (Chair)• Michael Habib, Reed Elsevier• Gregg Gordon, Social Science Research Network (SSRN)• William Gunn, Mendeley• Nettie Lagace, NISO• Jamie Liu, American Chemical Society (ACS)• Heather Piwowar, ImpactStory• John Sack, HighWire Press• Peter Shepherd, Project Counter• Christine Stohn, Ex Libris• Greg Tananbaum, SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
Meeting Format
• Livestreamed (video recordings now available)• Morning: lightning talks, post-it brainstorming• Afternoon: discussion groups – Business and use cases– Qualitative/quantitative– Quality and data science– Data integrity– Definitions– Future proofing
Next Steps (Phase 1)
• Review and process all input from meetings• Additional 1-on-1 interviews • Community input via niso.ideascale.com• Preparation of white paper• Public webinar(s) to discuss draft white paper• White paper/work proposal finalized; vetted
and approved by NISO leadership and members• Phase 2 to begin ~September 2014