[Web4lib] Article-Level Metrics At PLoS > Addition Of Usage Data

[McKiernan, Gerard [LIB]]

Colleagues/

 

Major Development by Public Library Of Science (PLoS) and Article-Level
Metrics !

 

/Gerry

 

 Submitted by Mark Patterson on Wed, 2009-09-16 11:10.

 

As part of our ongoing article-level metrics program, we're delighted to
announce that all seven PLoS journals will now provide online usage data
for published articles. With this addition, the suite of metrics on PLoS
articles now includes measures of: online usage; citations from the
scholarly literature; social bookmarks; blog coverage; and the Comments,
Notes and 'Star' ratings that have been made on the article.

 

[snip]

 

PLoS has therefore embarked on a program to aggregate a range of
available data about an article and place that data on the article
itself. The data are found on the new tab called 'Metrics', available on
all articles. A reader can now scan the various metrics to determine the
extent to which the article has been viewed, cited, covered in the media
and so forth. With the addition of usage data to the article-level
metrics we have taken another step towards providing the community with
valuable data that can be used and analyzed.

 

[snip]

 

In order to make article-level metrics as open and useful as possible,
we are providing our entire dataset as a downloadable spreadsheet and we
encourage interested researchers to download the data and perform their
own analyses.

 

[snip]

 

It's also important to emphasize that online usage should not be seen as
an absolute indicator of quality for any given article, and such data
must be interpreted with caution. To provide additional context and to
aid interpretation, we have provided a series of summary tables
indicating the average usage of categories of article (grouped by age,
journal and topic area).

 

Links to A Zipped Downloadable Spreadsheet Of The Entire Dataset,
Summary of Tables Indicating The Average Usage Of Categories Of Article
(Grouped By Age, Journal And Topic Area),FAQ, And A Background Posting,
Etc. Are Available At

 

[ http://tinyurl.com/ph85db  ]

 

 /Gerry 

 

Gerry McKiernan

Associate Professor

Science and Technology Librarian

Iowa State University Library

Ames IA 50011

 

gerrymck at iastate.edu 

"Is There Knowledge We Are Not Meant To Know?"