Assessing The USAGE and Value of Scholarly and Scientific Output: An Overview of traditional and emerging metrics 

November 10, 2010 

The Hub Cira Centre
2929 Arch Street
Suite 200
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(Adjacent to Amtrak's 30th Street Train Station)

  Register for the Event!

 To Attend On-Site  ( On-Site Registration Form - PDF)

  To Attend Virtually ( Virtual Registration Form - PDF)

AGENDA

*****************************************************

Identifying the value of scholarly and scientific articles output is essential in today's world of information overload. Time-constrained researchers and scholars want to access only the relevant information that is truly worthy of their attention. Traditionally, there have been two approaches to value assessment - citation counts, with its roots in the print environment, and in the digital world, online usage statistics.

But over time new metrics have emerged to address some of the many factors that can be taken into consideration when assessing value - the number of active scholars and researchers in a given subject discipline, their publishing and citing behavior, the number of article online views and downloads, etc. These new metrics complement the traditional approaches and when used together a more complete value assessment can be made. Today's program will provide an overview of the most popular metrics currently in use for measuring the value of articles and journals and the pros and cons of each approach.

8:30am - 9:00am: Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00am - 9:15am: Welcome

Bonnie Lawlor, NFAIS Executive Director
Judy Luther, President, Informed Strategies, Moderator

9:15am - 9:45am: The Usage Approach to Measuring Value: Project Counter and SUSHI

This session will provide an overview of the major traditional usage statistics tools: Project Counter - Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) and SUSHI (the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative). A brief history, their current status, future plans, and the relationship between these tools will be discussed.

Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist, EBSCO Information Services [ Slides ]

9:45am - 10:15am: PIRUS 2: Taking Counter to the Article level

This session will discuss PIRUS 2, a co-operative project involving publishers and repositories, that is developing a set of standards, protocols and processes to enable publishers, repositories and other organizations to generate and share authoritative, trustworthy usage statistics for the individual articles and other items that they host.

Ross MacIntyre, Senior Manager, Mimas, University of Manchester, UK [ Slides ]

10:15am - 10:30am: Break and Networking Opportunity

10:30am - 11:00am: Project MESUR: An Update

Project MESUR, initiated in 2006 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides an alternative or complement to citation metrics as a measure of the scholarly impact of journals and articles. The first phase of the project, undertaken by the Digital Library Research and Prototyping Team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, resulted in a large-scale reference database that allows for the mapping of science from the user's perspective. This session will take a look at the success of the project to date and the goals for future its development at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University.

Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, National Information Standards Organization (NISO) [Slides]

11:00am - 11:45pm: Evaluating the Use and Impacts of Scientific Data

Scientific data are used directly and indirectly in research, education, government, and industry, as well as in products and services used by the general public. Collecting, preparing, archiving, and disseminating scientific data requires resources that must often be justified to funding sources and sponsors. Systematic evaluation of the uses and the impacts of scientific data can help justify investments in data and also help improve the quality and usability of data products and services. The NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has implemented a number of different metrics for its network of data centers, including volume and usage metrics and a customer satisfaction survey. The NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) has also explored the use of citations in the peer-reviewed scientific literature as a measure of impact. Metrics of this type are likely to be of increasing importance in judging the value and return on investment in scientific data and information.

Dr. Robert D. Chen, Secretary-General, CODATA and Director, CIESIN, Columbia University; Dr. Robert Downs, Senior Digital Archivist, CIESIN, Columbia University [ Slides ]

11:45pm - 12:45pm: Lunch (will be provided)

12:45pm - 1:15pm: The Eigenfactor

Eigenfactor metrics were developed as an alternative to the well-known impact factor that is used to measure the value of a journal based upon the number of citations to articles in those journals. This session will take a look at the Eigenfactor and its approach to the measurement of the value of scholarly output.

Dr. Jevin West, Department of Biology, University of Washington [ Slides ]

1:15pm - 1:45pm: SNIP & SJR: A New Perspective in Journal Metrics

This session will take a look at a relatively new indicator of journal citation impact, denoted as source normalized impact per paper (SNIP). It measures a journal's contextual citation impact, taking into account characteristics of its properly defined subject field, especially the frequency at which authors cite other papers in their reference lists, the rapidity of maturing of citation impact, and the extent to which a database used for the assessment covers the field's literature

Ashlea Higgs, Senior Product Manager, Elsevier

1:45pm - 2:15pm: Article-Level Metrics at PLoS

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) believes that there is much to be gained from assessing research articles on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal (and its impact factor) where the work happens to be published. This session will take a look at the various article-level metrics that PLoS makes openly available on its website for the articles that it publishes.

Dr. Peter Binfield, Publisher, PLoS One and the Community Journals, Public Library of Science  [ Slides ]

2:15pm - 2:45pm: The Citation Approach to Measuring Value: Citation Indexes, Journal Metrics, and the Impact Factors

When the Science Citation Index was first proposed, its major objective was to break the so-called subject index barrier through the direct association of ideas that cited references presented. An invaluable method of sheer discovery, citation indexing also presented information to assist in objectively measuring the scholarly influence of papers, people, and journal publications. This secondary use of citation indexing, measuring influence, took on a life of its own of course. The Science Citation Index spawned the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the well known Impact Factor. Here we'll discuss JCR metrics and information derived from Thomson Reuters Citation Indexes and what this has for decades provided to information professionals, researchers, and the publishing community as a foundational resource for characterizing and evaluating journal literature.

Jeff Dougherty, Manager, Strategic Global Sales Support, Thomson Reuters Healthcare & Science [ Slides ]

2:45pm - 3:00pm: Break and Networking Opportunity

3:00pm - 4:00pm: Usage Statistics from the Librarian and Publisher Perspectives

This session will highlight how publishers and librarians use usage statistics in their decision-making processes. Whether the issue is product development or marketing for an information provider or collection development and marketing of services by a library, a careful analysis of usage statistics can result in informed-decision-making

Joseph Zucca, Director of Planning and Communication, University of Pennsylvania Libraries [ Slides ]

Jonathan Morgan, Assistant Director, Web Strategy and Innovation, American Chemical Society [ Slides ]

4:00pm: Adjourn

*********************************************************