Chapter 3. Issues, Controversies, and Opportunities for Altmetrics

Authors

  • Robin Chin Roemer
  • Rachel Borchardt

Abstract

Chapter 3 of Library Technology Reports (vol. 51, no. 5), “Altmetrics”

Chapter 3 details the conversations that have occurred around the use, adoption, and growth of altmetrics, including key controversies and opportunities. Several issues are identified that are likely to have a strong bearing on the future of altmetrics, particularly as they relate to its user demographics and standardization efforts.

Author Biographies

Robin Chin Roemer

Robin Chin Roemer is the instructional design & outreach services librarian at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle, Washington. Her responsibilities include support for online learning, professional and continuing education programs, and information literacy initiatives across the UW Libraries. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA, a master’s degree in English from UC Santa Barbara, and an MLIS from the University of Washington. Robin previously held the role of communication librarian at American University, where she worked closely with departments including journalism, film and media arts, communication studies, and public communication. She is the coauthor of the upcoming book, Meaningful Metrics: A 21st Century Librarian’s Guide to Bibliometrics, Altmetrics, and Research Impact, with her report coauthor Rachel Borchardt.

Rachel Borchardt

Rachel Borchardt is the science librarian at American University in Washington, DC. Her current job responsibilities include serving as a liaison to seven science departments, as well as responsibilities related to assessment, marketing, and research impact support within the library. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in neuroscience and psychology from Oberlin College, as well as an MLIS with a specialization in medical librarianship from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to her current position, she served as the biology and neuroscience and behavioral biology librarian at Emory University, and she has recently presented on the subject of altmetrics and academic libraries at several national-level venues, including the Charleston Conference and ALA Midwinter.

References

Hannah Jane Parkinson, “Instagram Purge Costs Celebrities Millions of Followers,” Guardian, December 19, 2014, www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/19/instagram-purge-costs-celebrities-millions-of-followers.

Julie Keck, “Buying Fake Twitter Followers Will Leave You Tweeting to Mannequins,” MediaShift, PBS, September 16, 2014, www.pbs.org/mediashift/2014/09/buying-fake-twitter-followers-will-leave-you-tweeting-to-mannequins.

Jennifer Lin, “A Case Study in Anti-gaming Mechanisms for Altmetrics: PLoS ALMs and DataTrust” (paper, altmetrics12 ACM Web Science Conference, Evanston, IL, June 21, 2012), http://altmetrics.org/altmetrics12/lin.

Euan Adie, “Gaming Altmetrics,” Altmetric blog, September 18, 2013, www.altmetric.com/blog/gaming-altmetrics.

Stacy Konkiel and Jason Priem, “What Jeffrey Beall Gets Wrong about Altmetrics,” Impactstory Blog, September 9, 2014, http://blog.impactstory.org/beall-altmetrics.

David Crotty, “Driving Altmetrics Performance through Marketing—A New Differentiator for Scholarly Journals?” The Scholarly Kitchen (blog), October 7, 2013, http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/10/07/altmetrics-and-the-value-of-publicity-efforts-for-journal-publishers.

Mike Thelwall, Stefanie Haustein, Vincent Larivière, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto, “Do Altmetrics Work? Twitter and Ten Other Social Web Services,” PLOS ONE, May 28, 2013, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064841.

Recent examples of these studies include the previously mentioned study by Thelwall, Haustein, Larivière, & Sugimoto (Ibid.) and Rodrigo Costas, Zohreh Zahedi, & Paul Wouters, “Do ‘Altmetrics’ Correlate with Citations? Extensive Comparison of Altmetrics Indicators with Citations from a Multidisciplinary Perspective,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, first published online July 28, 2014, doi:10.1002/asi.23309.

Zohreh Zahedi, Rodrigo Costas, and Paul Wouters, “How Well Developed Are Altmetrics? A Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of the Presence of ‘Alternative Metrics’ in Scientific Publications,” Scientometrics 101, no. 2 (2014): 1491–1513.

Jason Priem, Heather Piwowar, and Bradley Hemminger, “Altmetrics in the Wild: Using Social Media to Explore Scholarly Impact,” arXiv:1203.4745, March 20, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.4745.

Caroline S. Fox, Marc A. Bonaca, John J. Ryan, Joseph M. Massaro, Karen Barry, and Joseph Loscalzo, “A Randomized Trial of Social Media from Circulation,” Circulation 131 (2015): 28, doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.114.013509.

Phil Davis, “Social Media and Its Impact on Medical Research,” The Scholarly Kitchen (blog), January 14, 2015, http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/01/

/social-media-and-its-impact-on-medical-research.

“Article-Level Metrics,” SPARC website, accessed January 16, 2015, www.sparc.arl.org/initiatives/article-level-metrics.

Björn Hammarfelt, “Using Altmetrics for Assessing Research Impact in the Humanities,” Scientometrics 101, no. 2 (2014): 1419–30, www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:703046/FULLTEXT01.pdf.

Ehsan Mohammadi and Mike Thelwall, “Mendeley Readership Altmetrics for the Social Sciences and Humanities: Research Evaluation and Knowledge Flows,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65, no. 8 (August 2014): 1631, doi:10.1002/asi.23071.

Heather Piwowar, “ImpactStory Awarded $500k Grant from the Sloan Foundation,” Impactstory Blog, June 17, 2013, http://blog.impactstory.org/sloan.

Heather Piwowar, “ImpactStory Awarded $300k NSF Grant!” Impactstory Blog, September 27, 2013, http://blog.impactstory.org/impactstory-awarded-300k-nsf-grant.

National Science Foundation, “Making Data Count: Developing a Data Metrics Pilot,” award abstract 1448821, December 19, 2014, www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1448821&HistoricalAwards=false.

See “NISO Awarded Sloan Foundation Grant to Develop Standards and Recommended Practices for Altmetrics,” NR [NISO Reports], Information Standards Quarterly 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 40, www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/11276/NR_Altmetrics_Sloan_isqv25no2.pdf.

Heather Piwowar, “Altmetrics: Value All Research,” Nature 494, no. 159 (January 9, 2013), www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7431/full/493159a.html.

Fernando Maestre, “How I Use Altmetrics Data in My Proposals,” Maestre Lab blog, November 26, 2014, http://maestrelab.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-i-use-altmetrics-data-in-my.html.

Adam Dinsmore, Liz Allen, and Kevin Dolby, “Alternative Perspectives on Impact: The Potential of ALMs and Altmetrics to Inform Funders about Research Impact,” PLOS Biology, November 25, 2014, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002003.

Todd Carpenter and Nettie Lagace, “Proposal to Study, Propose, and Develop Community-Based Standards or Recommended Practices in the Field of Alternative Metrics,” March 19, 2013, www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/11012/niso-altmetrics-proposal_public_version.pdf.

“Alternative Metrics Initiative Phase 1 White Paper,” NISO, June 6, 2014, www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/13809/Altmetrics_project_phase1_white_paper.pdf.

“Phase 2 Projects,” in “NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics (Altmetrics) Initiative,” NISO website, accessed January 16, 2015, www.niso.org/topics/tl/altmetrics_initiative/#phase2.

Petr Knoth and Drahomira Herrmannova, “Towards Semantometrics: A New Semantic Similarity Based Measure for Assessing a Research Publication’s Contribution.” D-Lib Magazine 20, no. 11/12 (November/December 2014), www.dlib.org/dlib/november14/knoth/11knoth.html.

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Published

2015-07-02

Issue

Vol. 51 No. 5 (2015): July

Section

Chapters