Genesis of Altmetrics or Article-level Metrics for Measuring Efficacy of Scholarly Communications: Current Perspectives
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J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2
INTRODUCTION
In 2014, the Science Citation Index (SCI) – a pioneering product of erstwhile Institute of Scientific Information – completed a journey of 50 years. SCI is considered as a key enabler in making of topical areas of bibliometrics and scientometric. While SCI is completing its 50 th anniversary, another related area – altmetrics or article-level metrics (ALMs) J S C I R E S P E R S P E C T I V E P A P E R
Genesis of altmetrics or article‑level metrics for measuring efficacy of scholarly communications: Current perspectives
Anup Kumar Das*, Sanjaya Mishra Centre for Studies in Science Policy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, New Delhi, India
ABSTRACT
The article‑level metrics (ALMs) or altmetrics becomes a new trendsetter in recent times for measuring the impact of scientific publications and their social outreach to intended audiences. The popular social networks such as Facebook,
Twitter, and Linkedin and social bookmarks such as Mendeley and CiteULike are nowadays widely used for communicating research to larger transnational audiences. In 2012, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment got signed by the scientific and researchers communities across the world. This declaration has given preference to the ALM or altmetrics over traditional but faulty journal impact factor (JIF)‑based assessment of career scientists. JIF does not consider impact or influence beyond citations count as this count reflected only through Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science ® database. Furthermore, JIF provides indicator related to the journal, but not related to a published paper. Thus, altmetrics now becomes an alternative metrics for performance assessment of individual scientists and their contributed scholarly publications. This paper provides a glimpse of genesis of altmetrics in measuring efficacy of scholarly communications and highlights available altmetric tools and social platforms linking altmetric tools, which are widely used in deriving altmetric scores of scholarly publications. The paper thus argues for institutions and policy makers to pay more attention to altmetrics based indicators for evaluation purpose but cautions that proper safeguards and validations are needed before their adoption.
Keywords:
Altmetrics, article‑level metrics, citation database, research assessment, research communication, science communication is gaining substantial popularity amongst scientific communities, research communicators and research funders. Open access (OA) movement at the beginning of the 21 st century has strengthened online availability of scholarly publications across the world. The researchers and research communicators attribute the BBB OA declarations as game changers and greater enablers for promotion of scholarly research to larger communities beyond the researchers’ fraternities, but also to common citizens and taxpayers. BBB declarations are a group of OA-related declarations namely Budapest declaration in 2002, Berlin declaration in 2003 and Bethesda declaration in 2003 prompting public funded research to be made available and accessible in the public domain. These declarations ensured majority of research publications will be distributed or disseminated through OA channels such as OA knowledge repositories (i.e., green OA channel) and OA journals (i.e., gold OA channel). In this process, a silent transformation also takes place. There is a Access this article online
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E-mail: [email protected] and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics
J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 shift in measuring author’s productivity from journal-level indicators to ALM. The citation metrics using journal impact factor (JIF) and Journal immediacy index – both are associated with erstwhile SCI and now Web of Science ® and Journal Citation Reports ® of Thomson Reuter are felt inadequate in present circumstances while there is increased availability of scholarly publications in online public domain. ALM not only counts citations an individual research papers obtained, but also other influences such as number of downloads, social media share, coverage in news media, etc. The performance measurement for assessing research productivity of individual scientists, as obtained solely from counting number of citations or aggregate/average values of JIF, is no longer valued by funding agencies in developed countries. Rather they started impact evaluation of research publications or funded research projects very differently. Thus, altmetrics of a published paper is measured multi-dimensionally integrating its usage (downloads, views), peer-review (expert opinion), citations, and online interactions (storage, links, bookmarks, conversations).T h e S a n Fr a n c i s c o D e c l a r a t i o n o n Re s e a r ch Assessment (DORA), singed in 2012 by the scientific and researchers communities across the world, has given preference to the ALM or altmetrics over traditional but faulty JIF-based assessment of career scientists DORA, 2012. [1] The concept of altmetrics explores the potentialities of social media and academic social networks, which helps in increasing global visibility, accessibility and readability of publications shared by the contributing authors Liu, et al ., 2014. [2]
The researchers in the twenty-first century are very keen to maintain online researchers’ profiles in academic social networking websites. They are also interested in transnational networking through online discussion forums and peer-to-peer collaborative platforms. While a plenty of general purpose social networking sites are globally available, some online social networks are meant for academics and researchers. Academic social networking websites facilitate creation of online groups for discussions based on particular research interests. Table 1 in the later part of this paper provides an indicative list of social networking websites that facilitate networking of academics and researchers. All these social networking websites facilitate researchers in building their public profiles – listing their research publications, research projects, research positions or training. While ResearchGate.net, Academia.edu, Linkedin.com, and few others facilitate user-to-user interactions and e-collaborations through e-groups; getCITED.org, SSRN.com and few others do not have such web 2.0 features. Further details of some of these academic social networks are available in the following sub-sections.
GENESIS AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS
The altmetrics manifesto was published in 2010 by a group of enthusiasts and subsequently it becomes a baseline for a burgeoning altmetrics movement that achieves a global appreciation (Altmetrics.org/manifesto/). In 2011, a dynamic organization was born to technologically support multi-dimensional measurements of published works, beyond citation counts. The name of this start-up company is altmetric LLP, a new avatar in providing online services for generating ALM as a new performance indicator. Simultaneously, the concept of altmetrics is increasingly getting popular since the San Francisco DORA was made public in 2012. Altmetric.com narrates its genesis, as describe below:“Altmetric LLP was founded by Euan Adie in 2011 and grew out of the burgeoning altmetrics movement.
Table 1: Major academic social networks
ResearchGate.net Academia.edu getCITED.org SSRN.com
Target group Researchers Academics: Researchers, students Researchers Researchers, authorsFounded in 2008 2008 2004 1994Subject coverage All All All Social sciences, humanities and lawMission To give science back to the people who make it happen and to help researchers build reputation and accelerate scientific progress
To accelerate the world’s research; to make science faster and more open To make records of scholarly work publicly available To provide rapid worldwide distribution of research to authors and their readers and to facilitate communication among them at the lowest possible costAccount creation Free Free Free Free
Public profile of researchers Yes Yes Yes YesWeb 2.0 interactivity Yes Yes No No
SSRN = Social Science Research Network; getCITED.org = same as getcited.org as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 [3] et al ., 2014. [4] [5] (http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4321) Costas, et al ., 2014. [6]
GROWTH OF LITERATURE ON ALTMETRICS AND ARTICLE-LEVEL METRICS
For the purpose of this paper, the authors have performed an online search in Scopus database using search ter ms TITLE-ABS-KEY (altmetric*) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (ALM*), searchable in the title, abstract and keyword fields. The search query retrieved 70 documents as available within Scopus database on July 22, 2014. Retrieved documents were further analyzed to derive year-wise and country-wise distribution of published papers, top contributing authors, and top contributing institutions.Figure 1 shows the year-wise distribution of papers since the origination or conceptualization of term ALM in 2009. Year 2013 has been most productive in terms of producing literature on altmetrics. Till July 2014, only 14 documents published within year 2014 added to Scopus database. It is expected that more documents will be added for remaining part of year 2014 and will outnumber year 2013.Figure 2 shows country-wise distribution of papers on the topic of altmetrics. The United States of America stands highest producing 21 papers, United Kingdom stands second with 17 papers and Canada stands third with
Figure 1:
Year-wise distribution of Altmetrics Papers (as in Scopus till July 22, 2014) as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics
J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 et al ., 2010. [7] Papers appeared in altmetrics special issues of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2013) and ISQ (2013), respectively, started receiving a good number of citations. Interestingly, many of the papers appeared in Tables 2 and 3 are OA contents or freely available online, as indicated in these two tables.Table 4 shows top contributing authors and their respective affiliation and country. M. Thelwall of United Kingdom contributed the highest number of papers with six contributions on altmetrics topic as recorded in Scopus database, followed by J. Priem of the United States with five contributions. Other authors contributed three papers each. Interestingly, many of them associated with global altmetrics movement and projects related to altmetrics. Table 5 shows top contributing institutions in altmetrics area. The Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group of the University of Wolverhampton, UK is top contributing institution and followed by the School of Information and
Figure 2:
Country-wise distribution of Altmetrics Papers (as in Scopus till July 22, 2014)
Table 2: Top 10 highly cited papers (as in Scopus till 22 nd July 2014)
Paper details Cited by Google scholar citations Open access article
Eysenbach G. (2011). Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of
Scientific Impact. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13(4)
59 152 YesNeylon C. and Wu S. (2009). Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of
Scientific Impact. PLOS Biology, 7(11), e1000242
34 82 YesPiwowar H. (2013). Altmetrics: Value All Research Products. Nature, 493(7431), 159-159 16 58 NoThelwall M., Haustein S., Larivière V. and Sugimoto C. R. (2013). Do Altmetrics Work? Twitter and Ten Other Social Web Services. PLOS One, 8(5), e64841 14 47 YesWare M. (2011). Peer Review: Recent Experience and Future Directions. New Review of Information Networking, 16(1), 23-53 14 19 NoPriem J., Groth P. and Taraborelli D (2012). The Altmetrics Collection. PLOS One, 7(11), e48753 13 28 Yes
Yan K. K. and Gerstein M. (2011). The Spread of Scientific Information:
Insights from the Web Usage Statistics in PLOS Article-Level Metrics. PLOS One, 6(5), e19917 10 23 YesSchloegl C. and Gorraiz J. (2011). Global usage versus global citation metrics: The case of pharmacology journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(1), 161-170 10 16 NoGalligan F. and Dyas-Correia S. (2013). Altmetrics: Rethinking the Way We Measure. Serials Review, 39(1), 56-61 6 18 No
Jacsó P. (2010). Eigenfactor and Article Influence Scores in the Journal
Citation Reports. Online Information Review, 34(2), 339-348 6 12 No
PLOS=Public library of science as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2
Library Science of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. These institutions are also associated with global altmetrics movement and projects related to altmetrics.
ALTMETRICS TOOLS
The altmetric LLP remains a pioneer in providing altmetric-related solutions to specifically academic publishers, who would embed altmetric score in each scholarly article they publish in their e-journal gateways. Thus, altmetric score of an online scholarly article is instantly known to visitors of that particular e-journal. In some cases, readers even have convenient options to share bibliographic details of “liked” papers through their social media account. Here, users can instantly share any of these papers through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Mendeley, CiteULike, or similar interactive social networks. Figure 3 shows an indicative list of altmetrics tools available to the publishers, funders and researchers. In this figure, symbol “
Table 3: Other important publications on altmetrics covered in GS search engine
Paper details Google scholar citations Open access article
Priem J., Taraborelli D., Groth P. and Neylon, C. (2010). Altmetrics: A Manifesto 114 YesPriem J., Piwowar H. A. and Hemminger B. M. (2012). Altmetrics in the Wild: Using Social Media to Explore Scholarly Impact. arXiv preprint arXiv: 1203.4745 67 YesRoemer R. C. and Borchardt R. (2012). From Bibliometrics to Altmetrics A Changing Scholarly Landscape. College and Research Libraries News, 73(10), 596-600 21 YesAdie E. Roe W. (2013). Altmetric: Enriching Scholarly Content with Article-Level
Discussion and Metrics. Learned Publishing, 26(1), 11−17
18 YesKonkiel S. and Scherer D. (2013). New Opportunities for Repositories in the Age of Altmetrics. Bulletin of the ASISandT, 39(4), 22-26 15 YesPiwowar H. and Priem J. (2013). The Power of Altmetrics on a CV. Bulletin of the ASISandT, 39(4), 10-13 15 YesBuschman M. and Michalek A. (2013). Are Alternative Metrics Still Alternative?.
Bulletin of the ASISandT, 39(4), 35−39
13 YesMohammadi E. and Thelwall M. (2014). Mendeley Readership Altmetrics for the Social Sciences and Humanities: Research Evaluation and Knowledge Flows. Journal of the ASISandT, 65(8), 1627-1638 13 No
Binfield P. (2009). PLOS One: Background, Future Development, and Article‑Level
Metrics. Rethinking Electronic Publishing, ELPUB, 69-86 12 YesMounce R. (2013). Open Access and Altmetrics: Distinct but Complementary. Bulletin of the ASISandT, 39(4), 14-17 11 YesTananbaum G. (2013). Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer.
GS=Google scholar, PLOS=Public library of science
Table 4: Top authors in altmetrics (as in Scopus till 22 nd July 2014)
Name of author
Affiliation
Country Number of papers
M. Thelwall Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton U.K. 6J. Priem School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill USA 5P. Groth Department of Computer Science and The Network Institute, VU University Amsterdam Netherlands 3J. Bar-Ilan Department of Information Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan Israel 3S. Haustein École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; b Science-Metrix, Montréal Canada 3I. Peters Department of Information Science, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf Germany 3H. Piwowar Department of Biology, Duke University USA 3J. Terliesner Department of Information Science, Heinrich Heine University, Duesseldorf Germany 3 as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics
J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 providers, namely, Altmetric.com, ImpactStory.org, and PlumAnalytics.com. As indicated in this table, some of the functionalities are common in every platform. These websites provides application programming interface (API) and bookmarklet to publishers and users to fetch altmetric data from different sources. For example, altmetric API of Altmetric.com is an API that enables the publisher to enrich their article pages with ALM data. It helps system to system interaction and obtaining ALM data from different data sources as indicated later. Similarly, altmetric bookmarklet of Altmetric.com is a simple browser tool that lets a researcher instantly gets ALM data for any recent paper. It is a kind of browser plugin that can be integrated into researcher’s web browser Chrome, Firefox or Safari. DERIVING ALTMETRIC SCORES
Using Altmetric.com
As indicated in Figure 4, Altmetric Explorer of the Altmetric.com derives altmetric scores from a weighted algorithm covering article-level statistics of viewed, downloaded, cited, saved and discussed. A scholarly article’s popularity, usage, acceptance and availability are reflected in an altmetric score. Only articles with digital object identifier (DOI) are considered in arriving at a conclusive altmetric score. Thus, the primary requirement for having an altmetric score is to establish DOI of every published article in electronic journals. Altmetric.com covers about 900+ news sources across the world. Most of them belong to developed or western countries. Few of them belong to developing countries. About 20 news sources are covered from India, namely. The Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Deccan Herald, Indian Express, the Telegraph, DNA, Asian Age, Business Standard, Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, etc., Hence, if a scholarly article is mentioned in any of the news item in 900 + news sources, an artmetric score gets a higher value.
Altmetric badge
Altmetric.com provides a ready-to-use embeddable badge to journal publishers. This badge is embeddable in an article page to help the publishers showcasing impact in a beautiful way. This tool generates small donut shaped multicolor, multilayer visualizations to quickly convey information about each article, with a summary of the score from different data sources. Figure 5 shows an altmetric badge depicting how an article is being outreached and appraised
Table 5: Top institutions in altmetrics (as in Scopus till 22nd July 2014)
Name of institution and country Number of papers
Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK 6School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA 6Department of Information Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel 3VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands 3École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada 3Department of Information Science, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany 3School of Information and Library Science, Indiana University, USA 3 (cid:36)(cid:79)(cid:87)(cid:80)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:55)(cid:82)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:86)(cid:36)(cid:79)(cid:87)(cid:80)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:17)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:79)(cid:87)(cid:80)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:40)(cid:91)(cid:83)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:44)(cid:80)(cid:83)(cid:68)(cid:70)(cid:87)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:87)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:92)(cid:17)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:74)(cid:51)(cid:47)(cid:50)(cid:54)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:16)(cid:47)(cid:72)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:86)(cid:11)(cid:36)(cid:47)(cid:48)(cid:86)(cid:12)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:44)(cid:80)(cid:83)(cid:68)(cid:70)(cid:87)(cid:40)(cid:91)(cid:83)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:51)(cid:79)(cid:88)(cid:80)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:81)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:92)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:86)(cid:17)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:51)(cid:72)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:40)(cid:89)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:88)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:17)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:74)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:42)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:17)(cid:81)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:53)(cid:42)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:62)(cid:6)(cid:64)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:71)(cid:17)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:3)(cid:62)(cid:6)(cid:64)(cid:51)(cid:68)(cid:83)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:38)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:17)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:3)(cid:62)(cid:6)(cid:64)
Figure 3:
Altmetrics tools available to the publishers, funders, and researchers as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 through social media. However, this altmetric score does not include download statistics of the said article.
Using Public Library of Science Article-level Metric
The PLOS is one of the pioneering publisher that introduced ALM for its OA journals much earlier than many other e-journal gateways. PLOS ALM derived from different data sources as indicated in Figure 6. It includes counts with respect to usage, views, downloads, citations, social bookmarking, blogs, media coverage, and comments. Figure also indicates that PLOS ALM gets view or download statistics not only from PLOS journals but also from the PubMed Central database. Text Box 1 indicates purposes, usages and target users of PLOS ALM. It also helps you understand how PLOS ALM functions. PLOS metrics can be customized to address the needs of researchers, publishers, institutional decision makers, and funders.
Using ImpactStory.org
The ImpactStory.org is another leading provider of ALM data. This website offers registered users creating their impact profile on the web, revealing diverse impacts of their articles, datasets, software, and more. This
Table 6: Major altmetrics providers
Altmetric.com Impactstory.org Plumanalytics.com
Target group Researchers, publishers, librarians, editors, funders Researchers, publishers, funders Researchers, publishers, fundersFounded in 2011 2012 2011Mission To track and analyze the online activity around scholarly literature Discover the full impact of your research
To figure out more accurate ways of assessing research by analyzing the five categories of metricsUsageCapturesMentionsSocial mediaCitationsFunctionalities Authors should be able to see the attention that their articles are receiving in real-timePublishers, librarians and repository managers should be able to show authors and readers the conversations surrounding their contentEditors should be able to quickly identify commentary where a response is requiredResearchers should be able to see which recent papers their peers think are interesting Researchers who want to know how many times their work has been downloaded, bookmarked, and bloggedResearch groups who want to look at the broad impact of their work and see what has demonstrated interestFunders who want to see what sort of impact they may be missing when only considering citations to papersRepositories who want to report on how their research products are being discussedAll of us who believe that people should be rewarded when their work (no matter what the format) makes a positive impact (no matter what the venue)Aggregating evidence of impact will facilitate appropriate rewards, thereby encouraging additional openness of useful forms of research output Assess your impactTrack immediate impactGain an advantageMeasure all of your outputGroup metricsAnswer important questions (cid:55)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:79)(cid:87)(cid:80)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:57)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:72)(cid:71) (cid:38)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:71) (cid:54)(cid:68)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:71) (cid:39)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:70)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:43)(cid:55)(cid:48)(cid:47)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:68)(cid:74)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:89)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:51)(cid:39)(cid:41)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:82)(cid:90)(cid:81)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:59)(cid:48)(cid:47)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:82)(cid:90)(cid:81)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:171) (cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:83)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:58)(cid:72)(cid:69)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:15)(cid:42)(cid:82)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:15)(cid:38)(cid:85)(cid:82)(cid:86)(cid:86)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:73)(cid:171) (cid:38)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:88)(cid:47)(cid:76)(cid:78)(cid:72)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:39)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:171) (cid:55)(cid:90)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:41)(cid:68)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:69)(cid:82)(cid:82)(cid:78)(cid:15)(cid:42)(cid:82)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:14)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:47)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:78)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:44)(cid:81)(cid:15)(cid:69)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:81)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:87)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:171)
Figure 4:
Deriving an altmetric score as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics
J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 a list of contributed papers or presentations. These are categorized as < highly saved>,
An altmetric badge (cid:51)(cid:47)(cid:50)(cid:54)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:47)(cid:48)(cid:39)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:85)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:56)(cid:86)(cid:68)(cid:74)(cid:72)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:47)(cid:50)(cid:54)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:89)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:51)(cid:39)(cid:41)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:82)(cid:90)(cid:81)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:59)(cid:48)(cid:47)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:82)(cid:90)(cid:81)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:30)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:48)(cid:38)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:89)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:39)(cid:41)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:82)(cid:90)(cid:81)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:38)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:86)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:88)(cid:69)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:38)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:11)(cid:51)(cid:48)(cid:38)(cid:12)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:38)(cid:85)(cid:82)(cid:86)(cid:86)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:73)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:58)(cid:72)(cid:69)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:83)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:54)(cid:82)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:49)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:90)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:78)(cid:86)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:38)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:56)(cid:47)(cid:76)(cid:78)(cid:72)(cid:15)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:55)(cid:90)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:41)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:78)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:51)(cid:47)(cid:50)(cid:54)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:38)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:80)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:81)(cid:82)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:86)(cid:37)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:9)(cid:3)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:68)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:49)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:88)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:37)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:54)(cid:72)(cid:72)(cid:78)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:3)(cid:37)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:74)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:15)(cid:58)(cid:76)(cid:78)(cid:76)(cid:83)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:68)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:55)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:70)(cid:78)(cid:69)(cid:68)(cid:70)(cid:78)(cid:86)(cid:3)
Figure 6:
Data sources for public library of science article-level metrics
Text Box 1: Understanding PLOS ALMs
PLOS ALMs
Purpose: ALMs provide a suite of established metrics that measure the overall performance and reach of published research articlesFor whomResearchers: Maximize the impact of your research
Publishers: Enhance publication value through real‑time views of reach and influence
Institutions: Capture researcher impact for hiring, tenure, and promotion decisionsFunders: Track the performance and impact of research fundingALMs measure the dissemination and reach of published research articles. Traditionally, the impact of research articles has been measured by the publication journal. But a more informative view is one that examines the overall performance and reach of the articles themselves.
ALM are a comprehensive set of impact indicators that enable numerous ways to assess and navigate research most relevant to the field itself, includingUsageCitationsSocial bookmarking and dissemination activityMedia and blog coverageDiscussion activity and ratingsALMs are available, upon publication, for every article published by PLOS. Researchers can stay up-to-date with their published work and share information about the impact of their publications with collaborators, funders, institutions, and the research community at large. These metrics are also a powerful way to navigate and discover others’ work. Metrics can be customized to address the needs of researchers, publishers, institutional decision-makers, or fundersSource: http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/alm-info/
ALMs=Article‑level metrics, PLOS=Public library of science is a collaborative not-for-profit open source project supported by the US National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Open Society Foundation. ImpactStory.org helps in creating author’s profile and adding publication list through importing bibliographic records from different sources such as Scopus database, ORCID.org, GS citations, SlideShare.net and many others.A researcher can create a profile for free in this website to know how many times his/her work has been downloaded, bookmarked, and blogged. A researcher can also generate code to embed ImpactStory profile into his institutional CV and the research blog. The homepage of ImpactStory profile of the registered researcher shows as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2
Using PlumAnalytics.com
The fourth major altmetric provider is the PlumAnalytics.com. It categ orizes metrics into five se parate types: Usage, captures, mentions, social media, and citations. PlumAnalytics tracks more than 20 different types of artifacts, including journal articles, books, videos, presentations, conference proceedings, datasets, source code, cases, and more. Figure 7 indicates different data sources used in PlumAnalytics for deriving altmetrics of scholarly publications. As indicated here, PlumAnalytics also includes citation statistics from global patent databases. This is very unique, as compared to other three altmetrics providers. In January 2014, EBSCO has acquired this start-up company Enis, 2014. [8]
SOCIAL NETWORKS HELPING IMPROVEMENT OF RESEARCHERS’ ALTMETRIC SCORES
As we saw in the earlier sections, altmetrics data are derived from various social media and social bookmarking platforms. Researchers of the 21 st century need to collaborate with transnational researchers for a successful academic career. They have increased their visibility and participation at the global level through maintaining online profiles, both in general and academic social networking platforms. Their participation in transnational e-groups in online forums, including E-mail-based forums, increased possibilities of peer-to-peer collaborations. While a plenty of general purpose social networking sites are globally available, some online social networks are meant for academics and researchers. Academic social networks facilitate creation of online groups for discussion based on particular research interests. Table 7 provides an indicative list of general purpose social networking websites that also facilitate networking of academics and researchers, besides other citizens. Table 1 provides an indicative list of special purpose websites that mainly facilitate social networking of academics and researchers. While ResearchGate and Academia.edu facilitate user-to-user interactions through e-groups, getCITED.org, and SSRN.com do not have such web 2.0 feature. These academic research networks also ensure peer-to-peer communications through special interest e-groups, where sometimes membership is offered based on prior publications or prior contributions in the research fields USING ONLINE SOCIAL BOOKMARKS AND REFERENCE MANAGERS FOR IMPROVING ALTMETRIC SCORES
As we saw in the earlier sections, altmetrics data are also derived from online social bookmarks, and citation or reference managers. Some of the online reference managers also act as PDF organizers, and let others know which papers you read, reviewed or referred to your colleagues. Some of these citation managers also help you to produce subject bibliographies, based on recommended reading lists of your colleagues and e-group members. Thus, online reference managers and social bookmarks play important roles in deciding popularity metrics of research publications accessible online. Individual scholars also get tremendous encouragement when they see their publications are stored, reviewed, recommended and shared by e-groups. There also researchers can create online public profile for highlighting their research publications and reading lists. Table 8 briefly describes major online reference managers and social bookmarks, namely, CiteULike.org, Mendeley.com, Delicious.com and Zotero.org. Zotero is not presently linked to Altmetric.com. Similar few more online reference managers exist, but these are not linked to any altmetric tool used for deriving altmetric score. Some online reference managers, not mentioned in Table 8 although exist, are namely Flow (Flow.proquest.com), EndNote Basic (Endnote.com/basic/), and GS library (Scholar.google.com). Here also users can create an online account for storing references and (cid:51)(cid:79)(cid:88)(cid:80)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:81)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:92)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:86)(cid:39)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:85)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:56)(cid:86)(cid:68)(cid:74)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:16)(cid:3)(cid:39)(cid:82)(cid:90)(cid:81)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:57)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:37)(cid:82)(cid:82)(cid:78)(cid:3)(cid:43)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:44)(cid:47)(cid:47)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:39)(cid:82)(cid:70)(cid:88)(cid:80)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:3)(cid:39)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:92)(cid:38)(cid:68)(cid:83)(cid:87)(cid:88)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:16)(cid:3)(cid:41)(cid:68)(cid:89)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:37)(cid:82)(cid:82)(cid:78)(cid:80)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:78)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:68)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:42)(cid:85)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:83)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:58)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:16)(cid:3)(cid:37)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:82)(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:49)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:87)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:58)(cid:76)(cid:78)(cid:76)(cid:83)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:38)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:80)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:89)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:54)(cid:82)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:16)(cid:3)(cid:55)(cid:90)(cid:72)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:14)(cid:20)(cid:10)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:47)(cid:76)(cid:78)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:75)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:53)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:74)(cid:86)(cid:38)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:16)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:88)(cid:69)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:83)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:51)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:86)
Figure 7:
Data sources for PlumAnalytics.com article-level metrics as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics
J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 preparing bibliographies. These are also extensively used by researchers across disciplines. Some reference managers have desktop versions, which are freely downloadable and can be integrated with online accounts. Examples of desktop versions of reference managers are Mendeley and Zotero. EndNote also has a desktop version of the reference manager, although that is not freely available. ProQuest’s RefWorks is a reference manager having both online and desktop version. RefWorks’ simplified and free version is named Flow, which was launched in 2013 by ProQuest Inc. to be an earnest competitor of the Mendeley, EndNote Basic and Zotero. They will compete each other to increase their market share in the growing segment of online reference managers. Some of them will also be measured for deriving altmetric score of stored or shared research publications. CONCLUSION
Nowadays the researchers’ communities along with research funding agencies are giving much importance to altmetrics, due to better reflection of social impact and outreach of scientific publications using altmetric tools. However, scientific communities in the developing countries
Table 7: Important general purpose social networks useful for authors and researchers
Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Slideshare Figshare
Target group Any citizen Any citizen Any citizen Professionals Researchers; professionals ResearchersFounded 2004 2006 2011 2003 2006 2011Mission To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers To bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web, and making all of Google better by including people, their relationships and their interests Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful The world’s largest community to share and upload presentations online Publish all of your research outputs!
Public profile of individuals Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YesType of social media General purpose General purpose General purpose Professional
Format specific Format specific
Acceptable formats - - - - Presentations
Datasets, figures and tables
Table 8: Major online reference managers and social bookmarks
CiteULike Mendeley Delicious Zotero
Target group Researchers Academics: Researchers, students Researchers, professionals ResearchersFounded in 2004 2008 2003 2006About A free service for managing and discovering scholarly references A free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research Never lose a link again: Delicious is a free and easy tool to save, organize and discover interesting links on the web A free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sourcesOwnership Elsevier B.V. Science Inc. Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, USAAccount creation Free Free Free Free are still naïve in handling highly-interactive academic communication channels available to them with web 2.0 readiness. They need to have the necessary information and digital literacy competencies to be conversant with born-digital documents and sharing them with academic social networking platforms. The new-age researchers need to understand and grasp changing landscape of research communications, particularly which are helping global visibility of research communications. To become a successful researcher, one should first become a successful research communicator. One’s altmetric score will be increased significantly if he/she manages to reach out to researchers in his/her core and peripheral subject areas using a wide array of social networking platforms available to them. Thus, the nuance of research communication is commensurate with knowledge diffusion to the society.On the other hand, while discussing efficacy of altmetric indicators and altmetric tools in online discussion groups such as the SIGMETRICS (ASIS and T Special Interest Group on Metrics, [email protected]) and the GOAL (Global OA List, [email protected]) during year 2013 to 14, several discussants have pointed out certain as and Mishra: Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics J Scientometric Res. | May–Aug 2014 | Vol 3 | Issue 2 limitations or pitfalls of altmetrics. Their concerns are likely: Motivated downloading, automated downloading by special apps or robots, and publisher’s inflated downloading data in addition to misuse of traditional citation-based indicators, viz., authors’ and journals’ self-citation. As social media shares and likes are counted in altmetric scores, researchers and publishers may also push social media shares through undeclared paid advertisements. Although, some discussants do not mind sharing tables of contents in online mailing lists, social media groups, blogs and microblogs, as they considered this as part of research communications strategies adopted by many institutions, individuals, publishers and funders.Researchers and authors may liberally and ethically use social media tools to boost availability and accessibility of their published works. While other researchers and popular science writers would find the primary research works worthwhile or pioneering, these get mentioned in media articles, science blogs and micro blogs in addition to social bookmarking sites and online reference managers.Another concern is raised about acquisitions of start-up altmetric providing companies by large corporations. For example, PlumAnalytics.com was acquired by EBSCO LLC in January 2014. This will lead to further commercialization of altmetric business while nonprofit and developing countries’ publishers will be marginalized as they have less affordability of portraying altmetric data for every paper they publish. Till today, big publishers and publishers from developed countries are only portraying altmetric data on their respective article page. We need to re-look at these issues before advocating widespread use of altmetric indicators for research assessment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper is an outcome of a study carried out under the auspices of UNESCO-CEMCA Project titled “Development of curricula and self-directed learning Tools on Open Access.” The authors greatly acknowledge supports and professional inputs received from the UNESCO and CEMCA. The authors are also thankful to Dr. Bidyarthi Dutta of DLIS, Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India for his valuable feedbacks while preparation of this paper.
REFERENCES files/SFDeclarationFINAL.pdf [Last accessed on 2014 Aug 1].
How to cite this article:
Das AK, Mishra S. Genesis of altmetrics or article-level metrics for measuring efficacy of scholarly communications:
Current perspectives. J Sci Res 2014;3:82-92.
Source of Support:
Nil,
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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