NISO to develop standards for altmetrics

Type ‘altmetrics’ in google scholar today and it will pull out more than 4,000 records. Interest and discussion in the use of alternative metrics to measure research impact is growing but there is no agreement on what gets measured, what are the criteria used for assessing quality of the measures, etc. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has taken the lead to address these questions and to “develop community-based standards or recommended practices in altmetrics”.

In their June 2013 press release, Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director, stated that “The creation of altmetrics standards and best practices will facilitate the community trust in altmetrics, which will be a requirement for any broad-based acceptance, and will ensure that these altmetrics can be accurately compared and exchanged across publishers and platforms.”

This project is scheduled to complete within 2 years.

altmetrics : how librarians can help prepare faculty?

In their 5 page document, Riding the crest of the altmetrics wave : how librarians can help prepare faculty for the next generation of research impact metrics, the authors Scott Lapinski, Heather Piwowar and Jason Priem suggest the following :

1. Know the literature : eg. . keep current on the discussion around altmetrics.
2. Know the tools :
3. Integrate altmetrics into library outreach and education

Article-Level Metrics – A SPARC Primer

Curious about altmetrics and want to learn more about it? SPARC recently released a 14 page document, Article-Level Metrics — A SPARC Primer.

Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) is an emerging hot topic in scholarly publishing and this primer aims to give campus leaders and other interested parties an overview of what ALMs are, why they matter, how they complement established utilities and metrics, and how they might be considered for use in the tenure and promotion process.

Table of contents :
1. Executive summary
2. Article-level metrics defined
3. Article-level metricxs and open access
4. article-level metrics capture
5. ARticle-level metrics in action (A mention of info providers that have incorporated ALMs in their user experiences, eg. PLOS, Scopus, Nature …)
6. Article-level metrics and the tenure and promotion process (include some recommendations for institutions interested in exploring ALMs)
7. Limitations of article-level metrics
8. Potential of article-level metrics
9. Appendix : Altmetrics tools

Source : www.sparc.arl.org

Thomson Reuters Launches Free Online Version of EndNote

As reported in Asian Wall Street Journal (dated Apr 23 2013) the free version, known as EndNote Basic, comes with :

  • Storage up to 50,000 references
  • 20+ bibliographic styles; eg ABNT, ACS, APA 6th, Chicago 16th, CSE, IEEE, JAMA, MLA, Numbered, Turabain, Vancouver
  • 2GB of files storage
  • Online search of the 5 databases: British Library, CrossRef, Library of Congress, Lista (EBSCO), Pubmed)
  • Web reference capture

Not familiar with the use of EndNote? Have a look at the video entitled Basics of EndNote Basic (36 mins) hosted on youtube.

For Mendeley users who wish to change platform, steps on how to migrate Mendeley files to EndNote are as follows :

  • In the Mendeley Desktop program click on File and choose Export.
  • In the “Save As” field choose a name and a location for the file to be exported.
  • Click on the arrow beside the “Format” field and choose either “RIS – Research Information Systems (*.ris)” or “EndNote XML – EndNote v8, X1 or X2 (*.xml).”

The resulting file can be imported into an EndNote library using the relevant import option.

Source : EndNote Knowledgebase, “EndNote: Transferring records from Mendeley Desktop”

Elsevier buys Mendeley

The news that Reed Elsevier bought Mendeley, a free reference manager and PDF organiser, broke out on Monday Apr 8, 2013.

Since then, Peter Suber has deleted his Mendeley account and among the many blog posts on this subject, one on The Guardian, mentioned that the “news prompted strong reactions from the academic community”.

Will the use of Mendeley continue to be free? What changes can users expect? for more information, check out Mendeley’s blog.

Staff and students at NTU have access to EndNote, a bibliographic management software. EndNote has tools for searching, organizing and sharing work, creating bibliographies, and writing papers.
To download thia software, click here.