The Many Faces of Altmetrics Mapping the Social Reach of Research Mike on Twitter… Research Specialist

Altmetrics will revolutionize the way that academics view themselves and their work in the academic context. However, the increasing requirements to increase accessibility to research materials places new burdens on academics, publishers and other bodies in the scholarly community. How well is research being communicated and reported in society, how do different disciplines behave and gain influence? Using approaches derived from altmetrics, we may be able to firstly map the extent of research's social reach, and begin to compute its social impact.

The many faces 1.Prediction of ultimate citation 2.Measuring / recognizing component re-use / preparatory work / reproducibility 3.Hidden impact ( impact without citation ) 4.Real-time filtering / real-time evaluation 5.Platform / publisher / institution comparison 6.Measuring social reach / estimating social impact

Altmetrics is a very rich environment Which is why I favour small, low-judgment buckets of data classes: Social activity Component re-use Scholarly commentary Scholarly activity Mass media

Faces / buckets Social activity Scholarly activity Scholarly comment Mass-mediaRe-use Predictionxx Re-usex Hidden impact xxxxx Real-time filtering xx Comparisonxxx Social reachxx Guesswork that needs verification and data!

The more data we can see The bigger the picture Data from altmetric.com (c.100 articles since pubdate -2) Using PHP. And Excel :-D

Moving towards social reach Used to be end points – moment of publishing to citation Altmetric data points give us some insight into whats going on before and after this end points But its very limited Social reach needs more data points – bigger picture

More data points, more buckets! There is a lot of potential data missing: Mass media (citation practice and providing links in PR is AWFUL) Governmental documents / think-tank documents (citation practice is even worse!) Tertiary (et al) activity, commentary, etc Geo-location Moving away from academic focus

Faces / buckets Social activity Scholarly activity Scholarly comment Mass- media Re-usePatentsGovernm ent / legislative MemesValue- free chatter Predictionxxx Re-usexxx Hidden impact xxxxxxx Real-time filtering xxx Comparisonxxxxx Social reachxxxxxx Guesswork that needs verification and data!

Not all buckets are equal Advocating for much more data – and aggressive action to capture more data – this is both a technical and communications issue Advocating more focus when we define our purpose Not advocating using thousands of inane comments to predict citation rate (for example)

Faces / buckets Guesswork that needs verification and data!

The more data we can see… …The bigger the picture The richer the view of where research is reaching Vitally important for the success of public funding / OA / comparing platforms Contextualizing investment in research Social statements

Broad conclusion Altmetrics gives us the possibility of understanding the social impact of research Firstly, by allowing us to measure social reach, by both breadth and depth Secondly, providing evidence for meme networks, enabling context and modeling, using taxonomies / folksonomies Thirdly … just what is social impact anyway?

End note: what is social impact? Vaccination: apparently trivial to compute – sick days have a value (although criticized) Theoretical work? % of success, outcomes from earlier work? Research into Shakespeare – contribution to tourism? Economics? Well… if they cant do it…