[Web4lib] Article-Level Metrics And The Evolution Of Scientific Impact / Plus +

[McKiernan, Gerard [LIB]]

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