Scholarly Communication and Publishing Lunch and Learn 9Using Altmetrics to Demonstrate Scholarly Impact

Office of Scholarly Communication and PublishingUniversity Library SystemUniversity of Pittsburgh

Thursday, 27 March 2014CC BY 3.0

Defining Altmetrics

Alternative ways of measuring the use and impact of scholarship

“Altmetrics are measures of scholarly impact mined from activity in online tools and environments” (Jason Priem)

Altmetrics combines traditional impact measures (citation counts) with non-traditional measures

Altmetrics = ALL METRICS

New Measures More comprehensive

– Citations– Usage– Captures– Mentions– Social media

Covers impact of online behavior– Because scholars increasingly work online

Measures impact immediately– Because citation counts take years to appear in literature

Traditional vs. New

•Traditional measures are also counted

•Findings are complementary to conventional methods of measuring research impact (e.g., H-Index)

•Not intended to replace them

Researcher Impressions Altmetrics as a “forecast” of how your scholarly

work will be used by others – Encouraging for early-career researchers who are waiting

for citation counts but want some indicator of their reach

Seeing who is using and discussing your work fosters collaboration and new ideas– The researcher can get in on the social media conversation

Gives insight into the “discovery” portion of the research lifecycle– How are people discovering my work? How can I discover

new things myself?

The social role of scholars

Altmetrics has the potential . . . “To show the impact of research outside the

scholarly community (i.e., how it may be picked up by general/non-specialist audiences)”

“I think this is an important aspect of the researcher¹s role and altmetrics may give us (for the first time) some sort of social impact of research”– Berenika Webster

Altmetric Tools and Services

Impact Story Altmetric PLoS article-level metrics Plum Analytics/PlumX

PlumX – http://plu.mx/pitt Making research “more assessable

and accessible”– Gathering information in one place (profiles)– While scattering and sharing it in other places (widgets)– Making data intelligible and useful

Allowing researchers, labs, departments, institutions to track real-time scholarly impact

Promoting research, comparing with peers, connecting with new research

Altmetrics Project Timeline

Spring 2012: •First meeting with Plum Analytics

Summer 2012: •Announcement of Pitt as Plum Analytics’ first partner

Fall 2012•Gathered data from pilot participants

Winter 2013•PlumX pilot system made public

Spring 2013•Faculty surveyed; enhancements made

Fall 2013• IR widget launched; rollout preparations

Pilot Project Participants

• 32 researchers, various disciplines

• 9 schools• 18 departments• 1 complete research group• Others joined as they

learned about the project

Pilot Project Participants

discipline school/department

online behaviorlevel of career advancement

Selected faculty

participants, diversified by:

Key Features Faculty profiles Online artifacts

– Article– Book– Book chapter– Video, etc.

Impact graph Sunburst Widgets

Faculty Profile

Online Artifact Display

Impact Graph

Sunburst

Embeddable Widgets

For researchers, to add to:• their own Web pages• department directories• IR researcher profile page

For individual artifacts,to build article-level metrics for imbedding in:

• IR document abstract page• Article abstract page for

journals we publish

Plum Analytics Widget in e-Journals

• Displays altmetrics for each article • Piloted in early 2014 by the

International Journal of Telerehabilitation

• Now live in 10 e-journals; soon to be available in all 35

Release the Widgets!

Journals– http://telerehab.pitt.edu– http://jffp.pitt.edu – http://palrap.pitt.edu – http://biblios.pitt.edu– http://ricoeur.pitt.edu– http://cajgh.pitt.edu– http://hcs.pitt.edu– http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu– http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu – http://bsj.pitt.edu

Repositories– D-Scholarship@Pitt

Coming soon– PhilSci Archive– Archive of European

Integration– Minority Health and

Health Equity Archive– Industry Studies

Working Papers

Lavasani, M., Gehrmann, S., Gharaibeh, B., Clark, K., Kaufmann, R., Péault, B., Goitz, R., & Huard, J. (2011). Venous graft-derived cells participate in peripheral nerve regeneration. PloS one, 6(9), e24801. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024801

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/13897/

Impact: Full Text, Open Access Article

Ambrosio, F., Ferrari, R., Distefano, G., Plassmeyer, J., Carvell, G., and Deasy, B., Boninger, M., Fitzgerald, G., & Huard, J. (2010). The synergistic effect of treadmill running on stem-cell transplantation to heal injured skeletal muscle. Tissue engineering. Part A, 16(3), 839-49. doi:10.1089/ten.tea.2009.0113

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/15959/

Impact: Citation Only

Clark, Roland. (2012). European Fascists and Local Activists: Romania's Legion of the Archangel Michael. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/11837/ No restriction; immediate access worldwide

Impact: Unrestricted Dissertation

Bateman, Oliver. (2012). Law, Society, and Judicial Politics: State Supreme Courts and the Pursuit of Educational Equity. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/11865/ Restricted to University of Pittsburgh users only

until June 2015

Impact: Restricted Dissertation

Future Plans

Rollout to all Pitt Researchers– Faculty will edit their own user profiles and add artifacts– Sign-on will use Shibboleth and can be added to portal– Plum Analytics is working on Shibboleth compliance

Automate exchange of records from external systems into PlumX

– D-Scholarship@Pitt– Digital Vita or other Research Profiling Systems– Vendor-supplied data

Your Turn

What might a researcher say about their impact? What issues do you see arising in the use of

altmetrics data? Who do you think might be interested in altmetrics

and why? How would you “sell” PlumX to faculty? Or would

you?