Altmetrics: Mistaking the Means for the End
Should attention metrics play any role whatsoever in researcher assessment?
Reinventing the Impact Factor for the 21st century
If we were to build a citation reporting system today, what would it look like? In this post, I propose a solution that would do away with a separate Journal Citation Report (JCR) and propose a suite of services built around the Web of Science, directed to the needs of journal editors and publishers.
When a Scholar is One Among 500, What Does it Mean to be "An Author"?
Last week, an editorial in Nature highlighted the problem of the proliferating number of authors on papers. Following a 2012 symposium at Harvard University, a small group has proposed a taxonomy of contributor roles that would add details to an author list and have tested that among a group of authors. Scholarly publishers should consider adopting this taxonomy to improve the accuracy and granularity to improve attribution and the assignment of credit.
The Measurement of the Thing: Thinking About Metrics, Altmetrics and How to Beat Goodhart's Law
Can machine readable articles, built on author/editor/publisher curated declarative statements and the associated data (or links thereto), be a way of generating metrics that get us nearer to a ‘standard candle’ of scientific research output?
A Survey of University Presses
A survey of university presses on selling books directly from their Web sites shows that for most presses, sales hover around 1% of total volume, but a concerted effort to improve Web marketing could increase that figure to 3% or perhaps even more.
Wellcome Money — In This Example of Open Access Funding, the Matthew Effect Dominates
A surprising set of recipients dominate a list of APC payments released by Wellcome Trust, suggesting that OA is not leading to a reshaping of the industry but perhaps merely driving further consolidation.
What Library Directors Are Thinking: An Ithaka S+R Survey Report
Ithaka S+R has just published the latest in its ongoing series of triennial library director surveys, and its findings are interesting and, in some ways, sobering.
Privacy and the University Press
As university presses become more involved with D2C marketing, they are going to confront the need for clearly articulated privacy policies. The time to put those policies in place is now.
PLOS ONE Output Falls Following Impact Factor Decline
Are authors leaving PLOS ONE for higher performing journals?
Data Sharing and Science — Contemplating the Value of Empiricism, the Problem of Bias, and the Threats to Privacy
Data sharing and publication is a topic we need to consider carefully, and weigh the risks, costs, and benefits, as well as the complexities.
Is There Anything More Slow-moving than a Publisher?
Publishers are always said to be slow-moving, but the pace of development at the CHORUS organization belies that.
Data Detectives: Investigating What is, and What is Not, Measured
Businesses are using more data than ever to inform decision making. While the truly large Big Data may be limited to the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook, publishers are nonetheless managing more data than ever before. While the technical challenges may be less daunting with smaller data sets, there remain challenges in interpreting data and in using it to make informed decisions. Perhaps the most daunting challenge is in understanding the limitations of the dataset: What is being measured and, just as importantly, what is not being measured? What inferences and conclusions can be drawn and what is mere conjecture? Where are the bricks and mortar solid and where does the foundation give way beneath our feet?
Are Scientists Reading Less? Apparently, Scientists Didn't Read This Paper
When novel, newsworthy results are discovered to be wrong, is that still news?
Altmetrics Boosted by EBSCO's Acquisition of Plum Analytics
EBSCO has recently acquired altmetrics startup Plum Analytics. What will this mean for both companies and altmetrics in general?
A Metric for the Quality of Peer Review: Interview with Adam Etkin of PreSCORE
Adam Etkin describes the workings and rationale for scoring papers and journals based on the rigor of peer review they received prior to publication.