vancouver metrics&libraries rph 9 28-15

Tips for finding meaningful patterns across a variety of data:

Altmetrics in Action

Richard P. HulserChief Librarian & CuratorNatural History Museum

of Los Angeles Countyrhulser@nhm.org

“Outcomes, Value & Impact:

Metrics for Library Success”

Metrics and Libraries

Vancouver

September 28, 2015

NHM Family of Museums: 100 years +

MISSION: TO INSPIRE WONDER, DISCOVERY,

AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR NATURAL AND

CULTURAL WORLDS.

World Famous Permanent Exhibit Areas

Age of Mammals

July 2010

Dinosaurs – June 2011

Nature Gardens

Nature Lab

June 2013

Becoming Los Angeles

July 2013

Research Institution Key Challenges

Increase visibility and understanding of primary research and value to institution

Demonstrate how primary research increases perception of institution’s value to trustees, donors and general public

Have measurements to back up statements and reasoning

Tools for Consideration

Why Use Altmetrics Tools? Understand research online visibility & value

Demonstrate how primary research increases perception of institution reputation & value to community

Have measurements to back up statements & reasoning

Funders and donors are noticing…

Funders looking for proof of “broader impacts”

[often defined as “an effect, change, or benefit to the economy, society, culture,

public policies, health, the environment, etc.” ]

Grant agencies and private donors want recipients to broaden

dissemination to everyone

Going Beyond Citation Counts and Journal Impact Factors… altmetrics

Journal impact factor is a citation ratio:

number of cites in the current year to any items published in the journal in the previous 2 years and the number of substantive articles (source items)

published in the same 2 years.

What are altmetrics?

Why do they matter? They help tell a story

Justify

Quantify

Identify

Demonstrate

Discover

Measure

Altmetric (based in UK): supported by Digital Science division of MacMillan

Science & Education Their mission: “track and analyze the online activity around scholarly literature”

Measure the impact of research papers, books and datasets

  Track social media sites, newspapers, government policy documents and other

sources for mentions of scholarly articles.

  View, Analyze and Report on metrics with Altmetric Explorer

Why use Altmetric?

www.altmetricexplorer.com

Attention Measure –> Donut

The Altmetric donut visualizes sources of item discussions.

DOI or similar identifiers used to scan attention in social media & other online resources

DOI: Unique ID assigned through registration

agency Identifies content Provides persistent link to

Internet location Publisher assigns DOI when

article published electronically

The Altmetric Donut does not tell you…

Quality of the paper

Quality of the researchers

Whole story

It’s only one piece of the conversation.

What Altmetric tool cannot do Identify social media attention not citing research article with

a DOI or similar identifier

Capture information easily from articles published without DOI

Who benefits from Altmetric for Institution’s data?

Librarians

Research

administrators

Communications

&

Public Relations

Researchers

NHMLAC R&C Attention Overview

High interest NHM articles

Sea Stars 2014

Plesiosaur 2011

New Species of Flies 2015

Metrics Details: Tweets / Followers

Tweets Demographics

Navigate by authors, departments & journal subjects

Altmetric for Institutions lets you monitor, search and measure

conversations about publications by people affiliated with your

institution.

Things to keep in mind

Altmetrics will never present the full picture or provide the entire

answer – they are additional information to supplement your decision-

making process

Which altmetrics you use/are valuable varies depending on the objective

of each research project

Numbers provide a hint about where to look, the qualitative information is

where the value lies

Richard P. Hulser 22

Library and Archives at NHM Digital Village

Thank you !

http://www.nhm.org/site/research-collections/research-library

rhulser@nhm.org

Questions?