Presented at The 18th Nordic Workshop on Bibliometrics and Research Policy 2013. The workshop was held October 28 and 29 at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Blog posting: https://blogs.aalto.fi/suoritin/2013/11/04/smorgasbord-of-altmetrics/

1. Altmetrics
The 18th Nordic Workshop on Bibliometrics and Research Policy 2013
Tuija Sonkkila
Irma Pasanen
Eva Tolonen

2. What is altmetrics?
• "Impact metrics, drawn from online sources"
• "Social activity, component re-use, scholarly commentary,
scholarly activity, mass media mentions"
• "Giving credit for other scholarly outputs than citations such as
datasets, software, and blog posts"
• "A tool of discovery"
Article-level metrics (ALM) is altmetrics aggregated on article level
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3. Current status
• Increased visibility on publishers' sites and at organizational
repositories
• Core producers: Impact Story, Altmetric, Plum Analytics, PLOS
ALM
o With an ID, gather data from several dozen online services
o Make comparisons to other articles by percentile of a reference
set from the same year (ImpactStory) and/or the same journal
(Altmetric). Only PLOS makes field normalisation via its Relative
Metrics (in beta)
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4. Some research findings
• Moderate correlations between Mendeley readers and citation
counts (eg Priem, Piwowar, Hemminger)
• Correlations between Twitter and citation counts low in
biomedical papers, moderately negative among astrophysicists
(Haustein et al)
• Postdocs and PhDs read more highly cited papers than
professors do (Zahedi)
• F1000 recommendations not very good in predicting citations.
Correlation exists, but is weak (Waltman, Costas)
• Data inconsistencies between different aggregators
(Chamberlain)
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5. Examples of visibility
Terkko Navigator, University of Helsinki Faculty of Medicine
http://bit.ly/16d28KY
Purdue University e-Pubs
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ijpbl/vol1/iss1/3/
University of Pittsburgh
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/17829/
Nature
http://bit.ly/174xfsX
Carl Boettiger
http://impactstory.org/CarlBoettiger
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6. Aalto University examples
http://spark.rstudio.com/ttso/altm/
Smorgasbord for demonstrating various data
http://impactstory.org/user51892
Collection of <300 articles at Impact Story site
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7. Conclusions
Focus today? (eg Strasser)
• Altmetrics as a component in the local repository
• Altmetrics in researcher profiles: collect credit, pluggable to CRIS
Future? (Chamberlain)
• We need improved data provenance with a trail back to the
source
• One single impact score is appealing but does not put the impact
in context
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8. Thank you!
tuija.sonkkila at aalto.fi
irma.pasanen at aalto.fi
eva.tolonen at aalto.fi
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9. References
ALM Workshop 2013
http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/alm-workshop-2013/
Bornmann, Lutz: Is there currently a scientific revolution in scientometrics? JASIST, Letter to the editor (accepted for publication)
http://www.lutz-bornmann.de/icons/impactrevolution.pdf
Chamberlain, Scott: Consuming Article-Level Metrics: Observations and Lessons. Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) Summer
2013 Volume 25, no. 2, pp. 4-13
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/11303/FE_Chamberlain_Consuming_ALMs_isq_v25no2.pdf
Glänzel, Wolfgang and Wouters, Paul: The dos and don'ts in individual-level bibliometrics. 14th ISSI Conference, Vienna, 15-18
July 2013
http://www.slideshare.net/paulwouters1/issi2013-wg-pw
Haustein, Stefanie et al: Empirical analyses of scientific papers and researchers on Twitter: Results of two studies. ALM Workshop
2013
http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/files/2013/10/Haustein.pptx
Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) Summer 2013 Volume 25, no. 2 Topic: Altmetrics
http://www.niso.org/publications/isq/2013/v25no2/
Michalek, Andrea: Alternative metrics in practice. ALM Workshop 2013
http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/files/2013/10/Michalek.pptx
Mulvany, Ian: NISO ALM standardization workshop. Partially-attended (Blog)
http://partiallyattended.com/2013/10/16/niso-alm-standardisation/
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10. References, cont.
Priem, Jason (2012): Altmetrics in the Wild: Using Social Media to Explore Scholarly Impact. ArXiv
http://arxiv.org/html/1203.4745v1
Priem, Jason (2013): Scholarship, Beyond the Paper. Nature 495, 437–440 (28 March 2013)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v495/n7442/full/495437a.html
Strasser, Carly: Universities can improve academic services through wider recognition of altmetrics and alt-products. Impact of
Social Sciences (LSE blog)
http://bit.ly/19DLsta
Taylor, Mark: The many faces of altmetrics: mapping the social reach of research. ALM Workshop 2013
http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/files/2013/10/Taylor.pptx
Using Impact Story (introduction for scientists)
http://slidesha.re/GSgbtF
Waltman, Ludo and Costas, Rodrigo: F1000 recommendations as a new data source for research evaluation: A comparison with
citations
http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.3875
Zahedi, Zohreh: What is the impact of the publications read by the different Mendeley users? Could they be considered as signals
of future impact? ALM Workshop 2013
http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/files/2013/10/Zahedi.pptx
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11. Other sources
Altmetrics group in Mendeley
http://www.mendeley.com/groups/586171/altmetrics/papers/
#altmetrics hashtag in Twitter
PLOS Relative Metrics example
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/metrics/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000550;jsessionid=1699A1721267AE3
39795A5746FCB83FC
Twitter discussion thread on the scope of Altmetrics vs Article-level metrics
https://twitter.com/McDawg/status/366220670167814146
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altmetrics
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