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?