Altmetrics for Measuring Research Output

Robin Featherstone, MLISResearch Librarian, Alberta Research Centre for Health Evidence, Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta@rmfeatherstonehttp://www.slideshare.net/featherr

Altmetrics for Measuring Research Output

http://www.ualberta.ca/ARCHE/@arche4evidence

SOHLIN, Fall 2014

Conflict of interest disclosure• I have had free access to the

Altmetric.com Explorer since September 2013

Image by Nik Papageorgiou: http://theupturnedmicroscope.com

Altmetrics (AKA Social Media Metrics, Alternative Assessment Metrics) …[…] capture ways in which articles are disseminated throughout the expanding scholarly ecosystem, and reach beyond the scope of traditional trackers and filters.1

[…] measure research impact by including references outside of traditional scholarly publishing.2

1. Public Library of Science (PLOS). Altmetrics. [29 April 2014]. Available from http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/alt-metrics/

2. Baynes G. Scientometrics, bibliometrics, altmetrics: Some introductory advice for the lost and bemused. Insights. 2012;25(3):311-5. doi: 10.1629/2048-7754.25.3.311.

Altmetric tools measure data collected from:• Tweets• Blog mentions• Facebook posts• Presentations• News articles• Shared citations (e.g., Mendeley,

CiteULike)• Data uploads• Etc.

BIG DATA

Relevant for Research Evaluation?• Datasets• Conference posters• Theses & Dissertations• Lectures, online classes• Software• “Nanopublications”

What’s your impact1?

1. Emerald Group Publishing. Impact of Research [11 April 2014]. Available from: http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/authors/impact/index.htmhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/07/14/publishers-measuring-impact/

Agenda• Researcher-level vs. article-level

altmetrics• Product overview• Measurable mentions & unique IDs• Gaming the system• Altmetric research• Altmetrics for biomedical and health

sciences• Future directions: standards, research,

assessment

Researcher case study – Heather Piwowar

• h-index: 8 – 23 articles cited 258 times

http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=25122628200

Researcher Case Study – Heather Piwowar• Slideshare followers: 85

http://www.slideshare.net/hpiwowar

• ImpactStory research products: 117http://impactstory.org/HeatherPiwowar

• Figshare views: 1384http://figshare.com/authors/Heather_Piwowar/96399

• GitHub contributions: 1410https://github.com/hpiwowar

• Google Scholar h-index: 13 (51 publications cited 678 times)http://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=1YLq0XMAAAAJ&hl=en

• ResearchGate score: 14.33• Research Gate Impact Points: 50.29

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heather_Piwowar2

Article Case Study – Marshall 2013

• Web of Science times cited: 1• Google Scholar times cited: 21• Scopus times cited: 6

Article Case Study – Marshall 2013• Altmetric score: 76

Altmetrics Players

Q: Which twitter post will be counted by altmetrics measurement instruments?

A. Great review on pet ownership for children with autism by Gretchen Carlisle

B. Great review by @gretchgretch15 on pet ownership - #autism

C. Great review - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pedn.2013.09.005

What is gaming? • Alice has a new paper out. She asks those

grad students of hers who blog to write about it.

• Alice has a new paper out. She believes that it contains important information for diabetes patients and so signs up to a ’100 retweets for $$$’ service.

5. Case examples from: Adie, E. Gaming Altmetrics. [29 April 2014]. Available from http://www.altmetric.com/blog/gaming-altmetrics/

Auto-spamming

Spectrum of social media self-promotion

6. Adie, E. Gaming Altmetrics. [29 April 2014]. Available from http://www.altmetric.com/blog/gaming-altmetrics/

Altmetrics research• PLOS Altmetrics Collection: http://

www.ploscollections.org/altmetrics

• Many studies compared altmetrics with citation counts and Impact Factors

• Positive but weak correlations found

Altmetrics in the health sciences• ‘Biomedical and health sciences’

showed highest share of publications with Altmetric.com scores7

• Increasing numbers of PubMed citations were being tweeted8

2010 2.4%2011 10.9%2012 20.4%

7. Costas R, Zahedi Z, Wouters P. Do altmetrics correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of altmetric indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary perspective. arXiv preprint arXiv:14014321. 2014.8. Haustein S, Peters I, Sugimoto CR, Thelwall M, Larivière V. Tweeting biomedicine: An analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 2013.

Rank Score Article Title Year Journal

1 1350 Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children

2004 Pediatrics

2 558 Do Television and Electronic Games Predict Children’s Psychosocial Adjustment? Longitudinal Research Using the UK Millennium Cohort Study

2013 Archives of Disease in Childhood

3 521 Microbial Contamination of Human Milk Purchased via the Internet

2013 Pediatrics

4 457 Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial

2014 Pediatrics

5 383 Gun Violence Trends in Movies 2013 Pediatrics

Using Altmetrics.com rankings– Pediatric Journals

Using Altmetrics.com rankings- ARCHE publicationsRank Score Article Title Journal Notes1 152 How confidence

intervals become confusion intervals

BMC Medical Research Methodology

One of the highest ever scores in this journal (ranked #1 of 364) – article was mentioned by 219 tweeters

2 148 Lifestyle Interventions for Patients With and at Risk for Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Annals of Internal Medicine

Among the highest ever scored in this journal (ranked #37 of 2470) – article was mentioned by 128 tweeters

3 122 Social media use among patients and caregivers: a scoping review

BMJ Open Among the highest ever scored in this journal (ranked #22 of 1501) – article was mentioned by 150 tweeters

Future Directions – Publisher-driven altmetrics

Future Directions –Product development• Increase transparency of self-promotion

activites• Implement anti-spamming/anti-gaming

software solutions

Future Directions – Standards development

• NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics (Altmetrics) Initiative

Future Directions – Research• Is there a correlation between altmetrics

rankings and…– full-text downloads?– qualitative measures of interest? – …

Future Directions - Assessment• Will be used by: – funding agencies– research centres– libraries– Knowledge Translation (KT) researchers

Future Directions

The Alberta Research Centre for Health EvidenceEdmonton, Alberta, Canada

Robin Featherstone, MLIS@[email protected]

Slides available: http://www.slideshare.net/featherr