Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

12-2015

Abstract

Researchers are often asked to demonstrate their productivity and the impact of their research when they apply for funding, as well as when they go up for promotion and tenure. One of the ways they do this is by using traditional bibliometrics. Librarians, publishers, and institutions are other stakeholders with sometimes widely varying use cases for research impact metrics. Unfortunately, some traditional research impact metrics have been identified as barriers to open access initiatives, including Scholarship@Western.

Altmetrics provide an alternative or complement to traditional metrics. They generally use information available on the web to determine how research output is used in mainstream or social media sources. This provides an opportunity to talk about research impact in a broader way. Furthermore, altmetrics can incentivize OA publishing.

This presentation will address strengths and weaknesses of both traditional and alternative impact metrics, and provide examples and demonstrations of altmetrics in practice.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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