{"id":45,"date":"2015-03-09T19:49:01","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T02:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/?p=45"},"modified":"2015-03-09T20:01:59","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T03:01:59","slug":"altmetrics-measuring-impact-using-web-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/2015\/03\/09\/altmetrics-measuring-impact-using-web-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Altmetrics: Measuring Impact Using Web Data"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"By<\/a>

TapeMeasure, by Louise Docker, Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

In the field of scholarly publishing, the importance of a particular work has historically been measured by the number of times it is cited by other articles, known as\u00a0citation impact<\/a>. As\u00a0scholarly work is increasingly shared and discussed online, we’ve seen the emergency of\u00a0altmetrics<\/a>:\u00a0an alternative method of measuring the impact of academic works using web data. Altmetrics considers not only number of citations, but also other factors that indicate\u00a0impact, including number of views or downloads and mentions in social media or news (known as social engagement data). According to altmetrics, this means that each\u00a0time someone mentions a particular article on Twitter or Facebook, for example,\u00a0the overall impact of that article is believed to increase. The logic (which makes sense to me), is that the more that people are talking about and sharing something, the\u00a0more influential it is.<\/p>\n

The issue of determining scholarly impact will be of\u00a0interest to many academic librarians, especially anyone who works in the field of scholarly communications<\/a>. Altmetrics is also worth exploring for librarians and other information professionals working outside of academic libraries, because altmetrics\u00a0can also be used to measure the impact of individual people, organizations, videos, websites and more.<\/p>\n

A few months ago, I came across Altmetric.com<\/a>‘s\u00a0list of 2014’s Top 100<\/a> academic papers online.\u00a0The list aggregates the papers that received the most attention online and then ranks them, using article-level metrics<\/a> (ALM). It’s fascinating to see the different places that the papers were mentioned, and how many times. As social media becomes an increasingly major way that people consume and share news and information, I think it’s entirely appropriate that the impact of an article take into consideration its spread on social media.<\/p>\n

\"Altmetric<\/a>

http:\/\/www.altmetric.com\/top100\/2014\/<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

According to Altmetric.com<\/a>, the top paper of the year was “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks<\/a>.”\u00a0The article presents the results of an experiment the researchers conducted to demonstrate that Facebook users’ moods can be manipulated by adjusting what types of stories (uplifting, depressing, etc.) appear in their news feeds. I definitely remember\u00a0hearing\u00a0about this article multiple times through my own social media channels.\u00a0The article was mentioned in:<\/p>\n