This document discusses using social media to measure and filter science. It defines altmetrics as the creation and study of new metrics based on social web data to analyze and inform scholarship. An example study looked at blogging in chemistry. Current status includes academic work on usage metrics and altmetrics workshops and collections. Tools to measure altmetrics include those from PLOS, Mendeley, and Total Impact. Many questions remain around what impact is being measured and how to determine what population the metrics apply to. In conclusion, this area is just starting and may take 20 years to gain acceptance similarly to bibliometrics.

1. AN OVERVIEW OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA
TO MEASURE AND FILTER SCIENCE
Paul Groth
@pgroth
http://www.few.vu.nl/~pgroth
Thanks to:
Jason Priem, Dario Taraborelli,
Mike Thelwall, Peter van den Besselaar,
the altmetrics community

2. OVERVIEW
• Contextualizing Altmetrics
• Defining Altmetrics
• An example study
• Current status
• Going forward

3. What should I read?

4. What’s important?

5. How am I doing?

6. A KEY INGREDIENT
•What should I read?
•What’s important?
•How am I doing?
Measuring
Impact

7. CURRENT METHODS
Science Studies Methods
•Interviews
•Surveys
•Observations
•Bibliometrics
•Webometrics

8. Filter Failure
from jasonpriem

9. AND WHAT ABOUT THIS?
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10. Scientists do more than write
papers….

15. These leave traces on the
web

19. WE CAN MEASURE
Downloads
Where readers read
Data citation
Social network diffusion
Slide reuse
Peer review contributions
Youtube views
…

20. ALTMETRICS
altmetricsis the creation and study of new metrics based on
the Social Web for analyzing, and informing scholarship.
Summarized in:
J. Priem, D. Taraborelli, P. Groth, C. Neylon (2010), Alt-
metrics: A manifesto, (v.1.0), 26 October 2010.
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto
Faculty of Sciences

21. EXAMPLE: Studying Scientific Discourse on the Web using Bibliometrics: A
Chemistry Blogging Case Study.
Groth and Gurney, WebScience 2010
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22. Number of Posts ...more immediate
Difference in Age Between Post &
Publication (Years)

23. origins of life
/chemistry
future of
chemical fields
water research
atmospheric chemistry

24. CURRENT STATUS: ACADEMIC
Very good work on usage metrics
Workshop at Web Science 2011
http://altmetrics.org/workshop2011/
PloS ONE Collection
http://altmetrics.org/plosone/
Paper collection:
http://www.mendeley.com/groups/58
6171/altmetrics/
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25. CURRENT STATUS: TOOLS –
PLOS&MENDELEY BINARY BATTLE
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26. CURRENT STATUS: TOOLS
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27. CURRENT STATUS: TOOLS
http://total-impact.org
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28. QUESTIONS
• How do we know whether this measures true academic
impact?
• What sorts of new filters are necessary?
• What kind of impact are we measuring?
• At what level of aggregation (if any) are these metrics
useful for?
• Can we gain analysis by going for scale?
• Can science maps help us overcome variance in our
datasets?
• How do we determine what population we are talking
about?
•….
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29. CONCLUSION: WE ARE JUST STARTING
Reminder:
“It took approximately a generation (20 years) for
bibliographic citation analysis to achieve acceptability as a
measure of academic impact." (Vaughan and Shaw, 2003).
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