1 "How do I know thee? Let me count the cites..." Mike Taylor Elsevier Labs

2 As scholarly communication explodes and fragments, who will be the arbiter of good science? Will our hitherto internal metrics find a new life in the brave new world? Will there be a new currency of tweetation, linkage and nanoclaims? Or will indecision result in a defacto and proprietory ranking agency determining the common view of the scholarly universe? Abstract

3 Growth of research Fracturing of output Increasing diversity of channels Canonical Article / Journal under attack Is there a problem?

4 Proprietary Simplistic and over-generalizing From a time when paper ruled Can’t be accurately re-calculated from ‘outside’ Criticism of journal-level metrics

5 Is it the “open alternative” to proprietary interests? Does it predict citation count? Does it measure “real world” impact? Will it eliminate peer review? What makes altmetrics interesting?

6 Web links Mass media mentions Tweets Usage counts Recommendations in reference managers What is altmetrics anyway?

7 Data publishing and re-use Workflow sharing Authoring network analysis Down-stream influence Team development Anything else?

8 No Will it kill peer review?

9 No Wrong type of data Communities are too small Will it kill peer review?

10 It can be, but it’s not essential Total-impact – open Altmetric.com – openish / commercialish Plum Analytics – commercial Google / Microsoft Academic – who can say Is it open?

11 Possibly – research looks hopeful Can altmetrics predict impact?

12 Yes But does it mean anything? Does altmetrics measure “whole world” impact?

13 Some of the terms are similar But the rationale is different There is no level playing field Far more complicated It’s not a popularity contest Is altmetrics a specific form of web analytics?

14 Measure of success for a grad student is different from a senior industrial researcher Different fields have different cultures and different usage Different institutions want different things How much more complicated?

15 But we don’t know what And it keeps changing We will use science to work it out We know altmetrics means something

16 …Is the current state …But we need more data Research will let us make sense of the anarchy Out of the wilderness will come products An anarchy of data

17 One number does not fit all One product will not work for all There must be diversity Common understanding of what the data means Commonwealth of data and research Polemic!