[Web4lib] Got Impact? Major/Major New Studies Hot Off The Press

[McKiernan, Gerard [LIB]]

Colleagues/

 

Major/Major New Studies Hot Off The Press

 

/Gerry 

 

A Principal Component Analysis of 39 Scientific Impact Measures 

 

Bollen J, Van de Sompel H, Hagberg A, Chute R, 2009 A Principal
Component Analysis of 39 Scientific Impact Measures. PLoS ONE 4(6):
e6022. 

 

Background

 

The impact of scientific publications has traditionally been expressed
in terms of citation counts. However, scientific activity has moved
online over the past decade. To better capture scientific impact in the
digital era, a variety of new impact measures has been proposed on the
basis of social network analysis and usage log data. Here we investigate
how these new measures relate to each other, and how accurately and
completely they express scientific impact.

 

Methodology

 

We performed a principal component analysis of the rankings produced by
39 existing and proposed measures of scholarly impact that were
calculated on the basis of both citation and usage log data.

 

Our results indicate that the notion of scientific impact is a
multi-dimensional construct that can not be adequately measured by any
single indicator, although some measures are more suitable than others.
The commonly used citation Impact Factor is not positioned at the core
of this construct, but at its periphery, and should thus be used with
caution.

 

Received: May 14, 2009; Accepted: May 26, 2009; Published: June 29, 2009

 

Excerpts and Links To Full Text Available From 

 

[ http://tinyurl.com/n2zjtr  ]

 

_____________________________________________________

Article-Level Metrics (At PLoS And Beyond)

 

"Article-Level Metrics at PLoS" takes the view that readers need some
way to measure, or at least indicate, the 'worth' (or 'impact' etc) of a
journal article. 

 

With over a million articles published per year it's impossible to read
everything & so filtering tools are needed. Some journals have been
experimenting with providing data on online usage, but PLoS is going
further than this. 

 

We are at the start of a program to provide citations, usage data,
social bookmarking activity, media & blog coverage, commenting activity,
'star' ratings etc on all articles we publish. 

 

Links to The Full Presentation W/ Slides / Slide Notes / Audio / PDF And
Related Items Available At 

 

[  http://tinyurl.com/qb7nf4   ]

 

Enjoy !

 

/Gerry 

 

Gerry McKiernan

Associate Professor

Science and Technology Librarian

Iowa State University Library

Ames IA 50011

 

gerrymck at iastate.edu  

 

There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying

 

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