New data sources added to Article-Level Metrics
In 2009, PLoS became the first publisher to add comprehensive usage and reach data to every published article so that the entire academic community could form their own assessments of their value. Today, we’re pleased to announce the addition of 3 new data sources to our Article Level Metrics (ALM) program: article usage from PubMed Central; number of users via Mendeley; and number of Facebook mentions. We have also re-vamped the display of ALM data on the ‘Metrics’ tab of each article.
To find out more about these article enhancements, you can watch a short (<2 minute) video and browse these screen shots.
This is the first in a series of forthcoming developments to ALM that we expect to roll out in the next 12 months – you can expect to see the addition of Twitter as a data source in the next few weeks and a number of tools will be added to make use of ALM data in the journals this year – so watch this blog for tagged posts.
Talking to various participants at the excellent Science Online 2012 event in North Carolina earlier this month it became clear that while some are ALM experts there are many who haven’t heard that PLoS provides performance data for every article including the following data from the sources noted:
- Article usage – PLoS: page views, PDF and XML downloads. NEW: PubMedCentral: page views, PDF downloads
- Citations–CrossRef, PubMed Central, Scopus, ISI Web of Science
- PLoS reader evaluation –Comments, Notes, Star rating
- Blog coverage – Research Blogging, Nature Blogs
- Social tools –CiteULike and Connotea. NEW: Mendeley and Facebook.
Additionally, PLoS provides context for the performance of each article by providing journal and topic averages so researchers can see how their research compares with that of others.
The best way to get familiar with ALM’s is to click on the metrics tab at the top of your article – then you can understand more about the impact of your research and the discussions that it inspired!
It would be great idea if everyone could make comments on a section right below the paper. This tool could be a mix of Reddit/Quora, allowing to criticize and ask question to the scientific community. I believe that by this way we could spread scientific information and correct mistakes
That’s a good step forward. Is the code for these ALM implementations available somewhere public?
[…] Other benefits of OA include the ability to assess the interest in and utility of articles by a variety of novel metrics, though despite the accessibility of biomedical abstracts it remains early […]
[…] you will have noticed some ongoing enhancements to the journals this year, for example figures and Article-Level Metrics (ALM). You can expect similar developments to continue to roll out starting in early 2013 and into […]