Turning the page on altmetrics: Trends across publishers

Talk by Jean Liu, Product Development Manager (Altmetric) -- first presented at the "Emerging Tools and Metrics in the Book Impact Space" event hosted by Springer Nature on 24 January 2017 in King's Cross, London.

Transcript

1. Turning the page on altmetrics Trends across publishers Jean Liu Product Development Manager Altmetric.com @portablebrain @altmetric jean@altmetric.com
2. Metrics are generally pretty scarce for academic books. Downloads (sometimes) Sales figures Citations (sometimes)
3. In contrast, it’s usually a lot easier to find metrics for journal articles. Citations Downloads Page views
4. In 2012, altmetrics began a meteoric rise in the journal publishing world. News mentions Blog mentions Social media mentions Policy mentions alternative metrics
5. Now, publishers have been asking similar questions for books. Who is talking about my books? Where are the conversations happening? How can I leverage the attention?
6. 2012 Journal articles, datasets, a limited number of books A limited number of news stories and press releases 2013 2015 Clinical trial study records and webpages (URLs) Altmetric collaborated with Springer on “Bookmetrix” for Springer books. 2016 Altmetric launched Badges for Books on Routledge Handbooks Online. More books from Google Books and a wider range of academic publishers A Brief History of Altmetric for Books
7. So what have we learned about altmetrics for books?
8. Journal Articles Shorter, peer-reviewed original research or reviews about specific topics. Articles take less time to write, review, and publish. Academic Books Longer, in-depth, expert analyses and reviews of specific topics. Books take longer to write, edit, and publish. The differences matter
9. Journal Articles DOI, PubMed ID, RePeC ID, SSRN ID, ArXiv ID, Handle, URL •  Easy to disambiguate versions •  Reliable, consistent metadata formats across publishers “Trackability” matters TRACKABLE IDENTIFIERS Academic Books ISBN, DOI, URL, HLOM ID •  Difficult to disambiguate •  Inconsistent metadata formats across publishers TRACKABLE IDENTIFIERS
10. Academic Books ISBN, DOI, URL, HLOM ID •  Many older books lack identifiers, so URL tracking is useful •  However, not useful if a record for the book is not online TRACKABLE IDENTIFIERS
11. Journal Articles 1.  Social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+) 2.  News 3.  Blogs 4.  Wikipedia 5.  Peer review platforms TOP SOURCES OF ATTENTION Rankings are based on statistics collected between 1 Jan 2015 – 1 Jan 2017 for “article” and “book” outputs in the Altmetric database. Academic Books 1.  Social media (Twitter & Facebook) 2.  News 3.  Blogs 4.  Course syllabi 5.  Wikipedia TOP SOURCES OF ATTENTION The attention trends are different 367,400 mentions 48,123 books 7.6 mentions/book 15,515,434 mentions 1,992,796 articles 7.8 mentions/article
12. Journal Articles Academic Books Some things are the same!
13. Academic Books 1 2 3 4 5 Pearson Princeton Uni. Press Cengage Learning SAGE Routledge Books: Visible educational influence Syllabi mentions from Open Syllabus Project provide an early signal of educational attention.
14. Books: Visible educational influence StackExchange is a rather surprising source of educational attention that is more visible for books.
15. Books: Background to topical news
16. Books: Book authors as “journalists”
17. What can we do with altmetrics for books?
18. Authors and editors can see the reach, influence, and engagement with their books (and chapters) after publication. Marketing teams can better understand their audiences and boost their outreach efforts through online channels. Commissioning editors can identify potential authors or topics of interest for future book projects.
19. Next steps for Altmetric! •  Finding solutions for bad metadata •  Encouraging wider identifier use •  Understanding differences between disciplines •  Supporting even more publishers Challenges and Opportunities •  Tracking more book-specific attention channels •  Enhancing the Altmetric Explorer for Publishers, so they can do more with their book altmetrics CHALLENGES OPPORTUNITIES
20. Thanks for listening! Jean Liu Product Development Manager Altmetric.com jean@altmetric.com @portablebrain @altmetric