vancouver metrics&libraries rph 9 28-15
TRANSCRIPT
Tips for finding meaningful patterns across a variety of data:
Altmetrics in Action
Richard P. HulserChief Librarian & CuratorNatural History Museum
of Los Angeles [email protected]
“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
Questions?