Usage Bibliometrics

Scholarly usage data provides unique opportunities to address the known shortcomings of citation analysis. However, the collection, processing and analysis of usage data remains an area of active research. This article provides a review of the state-of-the-art in usage-based informetric, i.e. the use of usage data to study the scholarly process.Comment: Publisher's PDF (by permission). Publisher web site: books.infotoday.com/asist/arist44.shtm

SPEC Kit 346: Scholarly Output Assessment Activities

This SPEC Kit explores current ARL member library activities that help authors manage their scholarly identities, provide options for creating and disseminating scholarly outputs, offer strategies to enhance discoverability of scholarly outputs, help authors efficiently track scholarly outputs and impact, provide resources and tools to help authors assess their scholarly impact, create publication reports and social network maps for reporting purposes, and offer guidance and training on new trends and tools for reporting of impact. This study covers library assessment services and resources, training, staffing models, partnerships with the parent institution, marketing and publicity, and future trends. This SPEC Kit includes examples of training materials, job descriptions, descriptions of assessment services, examples of assessment reports, and research guides on scholarly output metrics

Leveraging the growth of open access in library collection decision making

A primary goal for collection management is assessing the relative value of continuing information resources. A variety of new environmental factors and data are pertinent to relative value. One of the emerging metrics is the degree to which the articles within a subscription journal are also available open access (OA). That OA level directly affects the value of a journal subscription. This paper outlines a theoretical model for accounting for open access in decision making by proposing an Open Access-adjusted Cost per Download metric. Refinements to the metric are also discussed, as well as how it can be applied, and the broader scholarly communication implications of leveraging open access in library decision making

Academic Libraries and Open Access Strategies

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively

Academic Libraries and Open Access Strategies

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively

A study of early indication citation metrics

Research outputs are growing in number and frequency, assisted by a greater number of publication mediums and platforms via which material can be disseminated. At the same time, the requirement to find acceptable, timely, objective measurements of research "quality" has become more important. Historically, citations have been used as an independent indication of the significance of scholarly material. However, citations are very slow to accrue since they can only be made by subsequently published material. This enforces a delay of a number of years before the citation impact of a publication can be accurately judged. By contrast, each new citation establishes a large number of co-citation relationships between that publication and older material whose citation impact is already well established. By taking advantage of this co-citation property, this thesis investigates the possibility of developing a metric that can provide an earlier indicator of a publication's citation impact. This thesis proposes a new family of cocitation based impact measures, describes a system to evaluate their effectiveness against a large citation database, and justifies the results of this evaluation against an analysis of a diverse range of research metric

Chemical Information Bulletin

Periodic supplement for "the regular journals of the American Chemical Society," containing annotated bibliographies of chemical documentation literature as well as information about meetings, conferences, awards, scholarships, and other news from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Chemical Literature

WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, AND WHY? QUANTIFYING AND UNDERSTANDING BIOMEDICAL DATA REUSE

Since the mid-2000s, new data sharing mandates have led to an increase in the amount of research data available for reuse. Reuse of data benefits the scientific community and the public by potentially speeding scientific discovery and increasing the return on investment of publicly funded research. However, despite the potential benefits of reuse and the increasing availability of data, research on the impact of data reuse is so far sparse. This dissertation provides a deeper understanding of the impacts of shared biomedical research data by exploring who is reusing data and for what purpose. Specifically, this dissertation examines use requests and dataset descriptions from three biomedical repositories that require potential requestors to submit descriptions of their planned reuse. Content analysis of use requests yields insight into who is requesting data and the methods and topics of their planned reuse. Comparing use requests to the descriptions of the original datasets provides insight into the breadth of impact of data reuse and text mining of the original dataset descriptions helps determine the topics of datasets that are highly reused. This study demonstrates that patterns of reuse differ between dataset types, with genomic datasets used more frequently together in meta-analyses for topics that diverge from the original purpose of collection, while clinical datasets are used more often on their own within a context that is similar to the reason for which they were collected. While requestors do come from a range of career stages from around the world, they are not evenly distributed; most requests come from English-speaking countries, especially the United States. This study also finds that datasets that receive the most requests soon after release continue to go on to be more requested, and that datasets covering common diseases are requested more than datasets on rare diseases. These findings have implications for several stakeholders, including funders and institutions developing policies to reward and incentivize data sharing, researchers who share data and those who reuse it, and repositories and data curators who must make choices about which datasets to curate and preserve

The Perceptions of Liaison Librarians, at a New Zealand Academic Institution, on the Role of Researchers in the Electronic Journal Environment

The objective of this project was to examine how liaison librarians perceive the role of the academic researcher in the electronic journal environment. An interview process was undertaken with twelve liaison librarians from the Arts, Business and General Science disciplines, at a New Zealand tertiary institution, to elicit their views in this regard. Interviewees were questioned on the researcher/liaison librarian relationship in terms of their interaction involving direct and indirect forms of communication, on the topic of electronic journal publications. The direct forms of communication examined in this study, included e-mail, phone interviews and face-to-face interactions. The material placed on the Library subject resource web pages, concerning electronic journal publications, encapsulated the indirect method of communication between liaison librarian and researcher. This study was conceptualized with Anthony Giddens' "Structuration Theory" as a contextual basis. Continuous access and search methodologies were discovered to be the predominant themes between liaison librarians and researchers engaged in direct communication, on the topic of electronic publication. Access to available information found in electronic journals proved to be the most critical factor for researchers engaged in information retrieval and dissemination. Search enquiries amongst researchers were generally found to be more about ratification of their methodologies rather than a didactic engagement on how to carry out a particular search. Though these themes were found to be universal across the disciplines, variances between the faculties examined and between academic departments within their respective faculties were discovered. Input from researchers, concerning information on issues surrounding electronic journal publication, which is published on library subject resource pages has been found to be negligible. Although some academic departments do have certain researchers who do engage in the publication of these pages, they are situated in a distinct minority. Information on bibliometric measurement, copyright, and licensing are placed on these pages predominantly on the initiative of the liaison librarians examined. Issues surrounding scholarly communication, bibliometric measurement, open access platforms and institutional repositories have been found to be a part of the liaison librarian/researcher interaction, in this study. Whilst researchers do engage in these topics on a collegial level, they are also engaging with liaison librarians to better educate themselves in these matters. The principal influence on researchers, asking about these topics, is Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF), and most lines of questioning involve this facet of academic research. It can be said that liaison librarians believe that researchers play an active role in their relationship with the electronic publication environment. The role of the liaison librarian can be seen increasingly as that of facilitator rather than educator and this role is readily accepted by researchers. This study involved only a small research population, at one New Zealand tertiary institution and as such the findings cannot be regarded as universal to all researchers. In addition to this, the findings are based on the perceptions of liaison librarians and not researchers and although these perceptions offer a useful and unique view, it cannot be described as definitive. However this study can be utilized as a starting point for further research that examines both the views of researchers and the study of other academic institutions

Making Institutional Repositories Work

Making Institutional Repositories Work takes novices as well as seasoned practitioners through the practical and conceptual steps necessary to develop a functioning institutional repository, customized to the needs and culture of the home institution. The first section covers all aspects of system platforms, including hosted and open-source options, big data capabilities and integration, and issues related to discoverability. The second section addresses policy issues, from the basics to open-source and deposit mandates. The third section focuses on recruiting and even creating content. Authors in this section will address the ways that different disciplines tend to have different motivations for deposit, as well as the various ways that institutional repositories can serve as publishing platforms. The fourth section covers assessment and success measures for all involved—librarians, deans, and administrators. The theory and practice of traditional metrics, alt metrics, and peer review receive chapter-length treatment. The fifth section provides case studies that include a boots-on-the-ground perspective of issues raised in the first four sections. By noting trends and potentialities, this final section, authored by Executive Director of SPARC Heather Joseph, makes future predictions and helps managers position institutional repositories to be responsive to change and even shape the evolution of scholarly communication.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/1040/thumbnail.jp