Augmented Reality and Health Informatics: A Study based on Bibliometric and Content Analysis of Scholarly Communication and Social Media

Healthcare outcomes have been shown to improve when technology is used as part of patient care. Health Informatics (HI) is a multidisciplinary study of the design, development, adoption, and application of IT-based innovations in healthcare services delivery, management, and planning. Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that enhances the user’s perception and interaction with the real world. This study aims to illuminate the intersection of the field of AR and HI. The domains of AR and HI by themselves are areas of significant research. However, there is a scarcity of research on augmented reality as it applies to health informatics. Given both scholarly research and social media communication having contributed to the domains of AR and HI, research methodologies of bibliometric and content analysis on scholarly research and social media communication were employed to investigate the salient features and research fronts of the field. The study used Scopus data (7360 scholarly publications) to identify the bibliometric features and to perform content analysis of the identified research. The Altmetric database (an aggregator of data sources) was used to determine the social media communication for this field. The findings from this study included Publication Volumes, Top Authors, Affiliations, Subject Areas and Geographical Locations from scholarly publications as well as from a social media perspective. The highest cited 200 documents were used to determine the research fronts in scholarly publications. Content Analysis techniques were employed on the publication abstracts as a secondary technique to determine the research themes of the field. The study found the research frontiers in the scholarly communication included emerging AR technologies such as tracking and computer vision along with Surgical and Learning applications. There was a commonality between social media and scholarly communication themes from an applications perspective. In addition, social media themes included applications of AR in Healthcare Delivery, Clinical Studies and Mental Disorders. Europe as a geographic region dominates the research field with 50% of the articles and North America and Asia tie for second with 20% each. Publication volumes show a steep upward slope indicating continued research. Social Media communication is still in its infancy in terms of data extraction, however aggregators like Altmetric are helping to enhance the outcomes. The findings from the study revealed that the frontier research in AR has made an impact in the surgical and learning applications of HI and has the potential for other applications as new technologies are adopted

Study on open science: The general state of the play in Open Science principles and practices at European life sciences institutes

Nowadays, open science is a hot topic on all levels and also is one of the priorities of the European Research Area. Components that are commonly associated with open science are open access, open data, open methodology, open source, open peer review, open science policies and citizen science. Open science may a great potential to connect and influence the practices of researchers, funding institutions and the public. In this paper, we evaluate the level of openness based on public surveys at four European life sciences institute

Congress UPV Proceedings of the 21ST International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators

This is the book of proceedings of the 21st Science and Technology Indicators Conference that took place in València (Spain) from 14th to 16th of September 2016. The conference theme for this year, ‘Peripheries, frontiers and beyond’ aimed to study the development and use of Science, Technology and Innovation indicators in spaces that have not been the focus of current indicator development, for example, in the Global South, or the Social Sciences and Humanities. The exploration to the margins and beyond proposed by the theme has brought to the STI Conference an interesting array of new contributors from a variety of fields and geographies. This year’s conference had a record 382 registered participants from 40 different countries, including 23 European, 9 American, 4 Asia-Pacific, 4 Africa and Near East. About 26% of participants came from outside of Europe. There were also many participants (17%) from organisations outside academia including governments (8%), businesses (5%), foundations (2%) and international organisations (2%). This is particularly important in a field that is practice-oriented. The chapters of the proceedings attest to the breadth of issues discussed. Infrastructure, benchmarking and use of innovation indicators, societal impact and mission oriented-research, mobility and careers, social sciences and the humanities, participation and culture, gender, and altmetrics, among others. We hope that the diversity of this Conference has fostered productive dialogues and synergistic ideas and made a contribution, small as it may be, to the development and use of indicators that, being more inclusive, will foster a more inclusive and fair world

Altmetrics for Digital Libraries: Concepts, Applications, Evaluation, and Recommendations

The volume of scientific literature is rapidly increasing, which has led to researchers becoming overloaded by the number of articles that they have available for reading and difficulties in estimating their quality and relevance (e.g., based on their research interests). Library portals, in these circumstances, are increasingly getting more relevant by using quality indicators that can help researchers during their research discovery process. Several evaluation methods (e.g., citations, Journal Impact Factor, and peer-reviews) have been used and suggested by library portals to help researchers filter out the relevant articles (e.g., articles that have received high citations) for their needs. However, in some cases, these methods have been criticized, and a number of weaknesses have been identified and discussed. For example, citations usually take a long time to appear, and some articles that are important can remain uncited. With the growing presence of social media today, new alternative indicators, known as “altmetrics,” have been encountered and proposed as complementary indicators to traditional measures (i.e., bibliometrics). They can help to identify the online attention received by articles, which might act as a further indicator for research assessment. One often mentioned advantage of these alternative indicators is, for example, that they appear much faster compared to citations. A large number of studies have explored altmetrics for different disciplines, but few studies have reported about altmetrics in the fields of Economics and Business Studies. Furthermore, no studies can be found so far that analyzed altmetrics within these disciplines with respect to libraries and information overload. Thus, this thesis explores opportunities for introducing altmetrics as new method for filtering relevant articles (in library portals) within the discipline of Economic and Business Studies literature. To achieve this objective, we have worked on four main aspects of investigating altmetrics and altmetrics data, respectively, of which the results can be used to fill the gap in this field of research. (1) We first highlight to what extent altmetric information from the two altmetric providers Mendeley and Altmetric.com is present within the journals of Economics and Business Studies. Based on the coverage, we demonstrate that altmetrics data are sparse in these disciplines, and when considering altmetrics data for real-world applications (e.g., in libraries), higher aggregation levels, such as journal level, can overcome their sparsity well. (2) We perform and discuss the correlations of citations on article and journal levels between different types and sources of altmetrics. We could show that Mendeley counts are positive and strongly correlated with citation counts on both article and journal levels, whereas other indicators such as Twitter counts and Altmetric Attention Score are significantly correlated only on journal level. With these correlations, we could suggest Mendeley counts for Economic and Business Studies journals/articles as an alternative indicator to citations. (3) In conjunction with the findings related to altmetrics in Economics and Business Studies journals, we discuss three use cases derived from three ZBW personas in terms of altmetrics. We investigate the use of altmetrics data for potential users with interests in new trends, social media platforms and journal rankings. (4) We investigated the behavior of economic researchers using a survey by exploring the usefulness of different altmetrics on journal level while they make decisions for selecting one article for reading. According to the user evaluation results, we demonstrate that altmetrics are not well known and understood by the economic community. However, this does not mean that these indicators are not helpful at all to economists. Instead, it brings forward the problem of how to introduce altmetrics to the economic community in the right way using which characteristics (e.g., as visible numbers attached at library records or behind the library’s relevance ranking system). Considering the aforementioned findings of this thesis, we can suggest several forms of presenting altmetric information in library portals, using EconBiz as the proof-of-concept, with the intention to assist both researchers and libraries to identify relevant journals or articles (e.g., highly mentioned online and recently published) for their need and to cope with the information overload

An Assessment of Impact Metrics’ Potential as Research Indicators Based on Their Perception, Usage, and Dependencies from External Science Communication

The demand for practicable methods for quantitative assessments of scientific products’ relevance has risen considerably over the past decades. As a consequence, research and commercial providers of scholarly data developed a wide variety of impact indicators, ranging from citation-based to so-called altmetrics. This highly heterogeneous family of indicators is based on the principle of measuring interactions with scientific publications that are observable online, and covers for instance mentions of publications in social and journalistic media, in literature management software, or in policy documents. The various metrics' theoretical validity as impact indicators is debated constantly, as questions regarding what it is that different metrics measure or express in many facets remain unanswered. This thesis makes two central contributions towards answering these questions. Its first part systematically assesses the status quo of various metrics’ perception and usage by researchers. This assessment serves to determine the significance of metrics in academic daily routines, as well as to identify relevant perceived problems concerning their usage. The challenges identified this way are in later sections of the thesis opposed with concrete measures to be taken during the development of future research metrics and their infrastructure to effectively solve common criticisms regarding current metrics and their use. Proceeding from the first part’s user studies, this thesis’ second part examines the relationship between research metrics and external science communication. It this way addresses a wide research gap with considerable potential implications for metrics’ validity as indicators for quality - the question to which degree these metrics are merely the result of promotion, which respective research publications receive

Networks of innovation: measuring, modelling and enhancing innovation in surgery

The rate of innovation occurring in surgery is beyond our systemic capacity to quantify, with several methodological and practical challenges. The existing paucity of surgical innovation metrics presents a global healthcare problem especially as surgical innovations become increasingly costlier at a time when healthcare provision is experiencing a radical transformation driven by pressures to reduce costs, an ageing population with ever-increasing healthcare needs and patients with growing expectations. This thesis aims to devise a novel, quantitative, network-based framework that will permit modelling and measuring surgical innovation to add the most value to patient care. It involves the systematic, graphical and analytical assessment of surgical innovation in a way that has never been done before. This is based on successful models previously applied in the industry with advanced analytical techniques derived from social science (network analysis). In doing so, it offers an exciting new perspective and opportunity for understanding how the innovation process originates and evolves in surgery and how it can be measured in terms of value and virality, a priority for the NHS, RCS, Imperial and the wider surgical community. The ability to measure value and rank innovations is expected to play a fundamental role in guiding policy, strategically direct surgical research funding, and uncover innovation barriers and catalysts. This will ensure participation in the forefront of novel surgical technology and lay the scientific foundations for the development of improved healthcare models and services to enhance the quality of healthcare delivered.Open Acces

B!SON: A Tool for Open Access Journal Recommendation

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish scientific work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of Predatory Publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. It is developed based on a systematic requirements analysis, built on open data, gives publisher-independent recommendations and works across domains. It suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using a large test set of 10,000 articles. Development by two German scientific libraries ensures the longevity of the project

Altmetrics for Digital Libraries

The volume of scientific literature is increasing and researchers have difficulties in estimating their quality and relevance. Library portals, therefore, are getting more relevant by using quality indicators to help researchers during their research process. With the growing presence of social media, altmetrics have been proposed as complementary indicators to traditional measures. Altmetrics can help to identify online attention and can appear much faster than citations. This study explores altmetrics for filtering relevant articles (in library portals) within the discipline of Economic and Business Studies literature. Firstly, it highlights the altmetrics presence from Mendeley and Altmetric.com for the journals in the above-mentioned disciplines. It presents correlations between citation and altmetrics on article and journal level, suggesting Mendeley counts as an alternative indicator to citations. Afterward, it investigates the use of altmetrics data for potential users with interests in new trends, social media platforms, and journal rankings. Lastly, it explores the behavior of economic researchers using a survey by discovering the usefulness of different altmetrics. With the findings of this study, several forms of altmetrics in library portals are discussed, using EconBiz as the proof-of-concept, to assist both researchers and libraries to identify relevant journals or articles and to cope with the information overload

Expanding perspective on open science: communities, cultures and diversity in concepts and practices

Twenty-one years ago, the term ‘electronic publishing’ promised all manner of potential that the Web and network technologies could bring to scholarly communication, scientific research and technical innovation. Over the last two decades, tremendous developments have indeed taken place across all of these domains. One of the most important of these has been Open Science; perhaps the most widely discussed topic in research communications today. This book presents the proceedings of Elpub 2017, the 21st edition of the International Conference on Electronic Publishing, held in Limassol, Cyprus, in June 2017. Continuing the tradition of bringing together academics, publishers, lecturers, librarians, developers, entrepreneurs, users and all other stakeholders interested in the issues surrounding electronic publishing, this edition of the conference focuses on Open Science, and the 27 research and practitioner papers and 1 poster included here reflect the results and ideas of researchers and practitioners with diverse backgrounds from all around the world with regard to this important subject. Intended to generate discussion and debate on the potential and limitations of openness, the book addresses the current challenges and opportunities in the ecosystem of Open Science, and explores how to move forward in developing an inclusive system that will work for a much broader range of participants. It will be of interest to all those concerned with electronic publishing, and Open Science in particular

Can web indicators be used to estimate the citation impact of conference papers in engineering?

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Although citation counts are widely used to support research evaluation, they can only reflect academic impacts, whereas research can also be useful outside academia. There is therefore a need for alternative indicators and empirical studies to evaluate them. Whilst many previous studies have investigated alternative indicators for journal articles and books, this thesis explores the importance and suitability of four web indicators for conference papers. These are readership counts from the online reference manager Mendeley and citation counts from Google Patents, Wikipedia and Google Books. To help evaluate these indicators for conference papers, correlations with Scopus citations were evaluated for each alternative indicator and compared with corresponding correlations between alternative indicators and citation counts for journal articles. Four subject areas that value conferences were chosen for the analysis: Computer Science Applications; Computer Software Engineering; Building & Construction Engineering; and Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering. There were moderate correlations between Mendeley readership counts and Scopus citation counts for both journal articles and conference papers in Computer Science Applications and Computer Software. For conference papers in Building & Construction Engineering and Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, the correlations between Mendeley readers and citation counts are much lower than for journal articles. Thus, in fields where conferences are important, Mendeley readership counts are reasonable impact indicators for conference papers although they are better impact indicators for journal articles. Google Patent citations had low positive correlations with citation counts for both conference papers and journal articles in Software Engineering and Computer Science Applications. There were negative correlations for both conference papers and journal articles in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. However, conference papers in Building and Construction Engineering attracted no Google Patent citations. This suggests that there are disciplinary differences but little overall value for Google Patent citations as impact indicators in engineering fields valuing conferences. Wikipedia citations had correlations with Scopus citations that were statistically significantly positive only in Computer Science Applications, whereas the correlations were not statistically significantly different from zero in Building & Construction Engineering, Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering and Software Engineering. Conference papers were less likely to be cited in Wikipedia than journal articles were in all fields, although the difference was minor in Software Engineering. Thus, Wikipedia citations seem to have little value in engineering fields valuing conferences. Google Books citations had positive significant correlations with Scopus-indexed citations for conference papers in all fields except Building & Construction Engineering, where the correlations were not statistically significantly different from zero. Google Books citations seemed to be most valuable impact indicators in Computer Science Applications and Software Engineering, where the correlations were moderate, than in Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, where the correlations were low. This means that Google Book citations are valuable indicators for conference papers in engineering fields valuing conferences. Although evidence from correlation tests alone is insufficient to judge the value of alternative indicators, the results suggest that Mendeley readers and Google Books citations may be useful for both journal articles and conference papers in engineering fields that value conferences, but not Wikipedia citations or Google Patent citations.Tetfund, Nigeri