[Asis-l] Article-Level Metrics And The Evolution Of Scientific Impact / Plus +

[gerrymck]

Colleagues/

An Important Article, But ... Not As Radical As I Would Suggest ... [:-)

See The Bottom Of This Posting For My View(s) / Links

/Gerry

Neylon C, Wu S (2009) Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of
Scientific Impact. PLoS Biol 7(11): e1000242.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000242 / Published: November 17, 2009

[snip]

“‘Other Indicators of Impact’ include ratings and comments, which,
like page views, are immediate but may offer more insight because
users are more likely to have read the article and found it compelling
enough to respond. Additional other indicators are bookmarks, used by
some people to keep track of articles of interest to them, and blog
posts and trackbacks, which indicate where else on the Web the article
has been mentioned and can be useful for linking to a broader
discussion. It is clear that all of the types of data provide
different dimensions, which together can give a clearer picture of an
article's impact.

[snip] As recently shown ... , scientific impact is not a simple
concept that can be described by a single number. The key point is
that journal impact factor is a very poor measure of article impact.
And, obviously, the fact that an article is highly influential by any
measure does not necessarily mean it should be.

Many researchers will continue to rely on journals as filters, but the
more you can incorporate effective filtering tools into your research
process, the more you will stay up-to-date with advancing knowledge.
The question is not whether you should take article-level metrics
seriously but how you can use them most effectively to assist your own
research endeavours. We need sophisticated metrics to ask
sophisticated questions about different aspects of scientific impact
and we need further research into both the most effective measurement
techniques and the most effective uses of these in policy and decision
making. For this reason we strongly support efforts to collect and
present diverse types of article-level metrics without any initial
presumptions as to which metric is most valuable. [snip]

As Clay Shirky famously said ... , you can complain about information
overload but the only way to deal with it is to build and use better
filters. It is no longer sufficient to depend on journals as your only
filter; instead, it is time to start evaluating papers on their own
merits. Our only options are to publish less or to filter more
effectively, and any response that favours publishing less doesn't
make sense, either logistically, financially, or ethically. The issue
is not how to stop people from publishing, it is how to build better
filters, both systematically and individually. At the same time, we
can use available tools, networks, and tools built on networks to help
with this task.

So in the spirit of science, let's keep learning and experimenting,
and keep the practice and dissemination of science evolving for the
times.”

>>> While These Insights and Suggestions Are An Important Contribution To The Conversation , In Many Ways The Views And Recommendations Are Far From Radical  [:-)] <<<

See My Presentation Delivered At the _Workshop On Peer Review_,
Trieste, Italy, May 23-24 2003

"Alternative Peer Review: Quality Management for 21st Century Scholarship"

>>> See In Particular > 'Seize The E!’ Section >>> “Embrace the potential of the digital environment to facilitate access, retrieval, use, _and_ navigation of electronic scholarship”

>>It's A Large PPT (200+ Slides) But IMHO ... Well Worth The Experience [:-)]<<

AND

The Big Picture(sm): Visual Browsing in Web and non-Web Databases

To ReQuote T.S. Elloit >

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge
that we have lost in information?"/ T.S. Eliot / The Rock (1934) pt.1

To Quote Me >

"It's Not About Publication, It's About Ideas"

>> We Now Have The Computational Power To Make Real-Time Conceptual Navigation An EveryDay Occurrence <<<

Full Text Of Article / PPT / and Website Available At

[  http://tinyurl.com/yzoeqg9 ]

!! Let Us Use It To Navigate Ideas !!!

Indeed Let Us Continue "... experimenting, and keep the practice and
dissemination of science evolving for the times."

EnJOY!

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu

There Is No Answer, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying

The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed
Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace