[Asis-standards] NISO to Develop Standards and Recommended Practices for Altmetrics

[Mark Needleman-UF]

FYI

 

Mark

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Colleagues

 

Grant from Sloan Foundation will fund community-informed effort to
standardize collection and use of alternative metrics measuring research
impact

 

Baltimore, MD - June 20, 2013 - The National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) announces a new two-phase project to study, propose, and
develop community-based standards or recommended practices in the field of
alternative metrics. Assessment of scholarship is a critical component of
the research process, impacting everything from which projects get funded to
who gains promotion and tenure to which publications gain prominence. Since
Eugene Garfield's pioneering work in the 1960s, much of the work on research
assessment has been based upon citations, a valuable measure but one that
has failed to keep pace with online reader behavior, network interactions
with content, social media, and online content management. Exemplified by
innovative new platforms like ImpactStory, a new movement is growing to
develop more robust alternative metrics-called altmetrics-that complement
traditional citation metrics. NISO will first hold several in-person and
virtual meetings to identify critical areas where altmetrics standards or
recommended practices are needed and then convene a working group to develop
consensus standards and/or recommended practices. The project is funded
through a $207,500 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

 

Citation analysis lacks ways to measure the newer and more prevalent ways
that articles generate impact such as through social networking tools like
Twitter, Facebook, or blogs," explains Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate
Director for Programs. "Additionally, new forms of scholarly outputs, such
as datasets, software tools, algorithms, or molecular structures are now
commonplace, but they are not easily-if at all-assessed by traditional
citation metrics. These are two among the many concerns the growing movement
around altmetrics is trying to address."

 

"For altmetrics to move out of its current pilot and proof-of-concept phase,
the community must begin coalescing around a suite of commonly understood
definitions, calculations, and data sharing practices," states Todd
Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. "Organizations and researchers wanting
to apply these metrics need to adequately understand them, ensure their
consistent application and meaning across the community, and have methods
for auditing their accuracy. We must agree on what gets measured, what the
criteria are for assessing the quality of the measures, at what granularity
these metrics are compiled and analyzed, how long a period the altmetrics
should cover, the role of social media in altmetrics, the technical
infrastructure necessary to exchange this data, and which new altmetrics
will prove most valuable. The creation of altmetrics standards and best
practices will facilitate the community trust in altmetrics, which will be a
requirement for any broad-based acceptance, and will ensure that these
altmetrics can be accurately compared and exchanged across publishers and
platforms."

 

[more]

 

Source and Full Text Available At

 

[
http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2013/09/niso-to-develop-standards-and.html
]

 

/Gerry

 

Gerry McKiernan

Associate Professor

and

Science and Technology Librarian

Iowa State University

152 Parks Library 

Ames IA 50011

 

"It's Not The Journey; It's The Detours."

 

http://ref-notes.blogspot.com/2013/09/its-not-journey-its-detours.html 

 

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