Latest Developments in PLoS Article-Level Metrics
PLoS continues to expand and refine Article-Level Metrics (ALM). This suite of performance measures (including usage statistics, citations, trackbacks from blogs, bookmarks, social media coverage and user comments and ratings) are available on every PLoS article so that authors and the scientific community can assess the impact of the research. We are also broadening our outreach activities to spread the word on ALM to more researchers, technical experts, other publishers, funders, and institutions.
A key part of the current effort is to convene scholarly metrics thought leaders to help spearhead the widespread adoption of ALM. By engaging leading authorities in metrics, and bringing them together in a working group, PLoS can better coordinate the development of ALM. The following experts serve on the ALM Technical Working Group in an advisory role to help steer the direction of PLoS ALM implementation:
- Pedro Beltrao, University of California at San Francisco
- Phil Bourne, University of California at San Diego
- Bjoern Brembs, Freie Universität Berlin
- Martin Fenner, PLoS
- Duncan Hull, European Bioinformatics Institute
- Cameron Neylon, Science and Technology Facilities Council Oxford
- Heather Piwowar, NESCent, Duke University
- Jason Priem, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Dario Taraborelli, Wikimedia Foundation
- Jevin West, University of Washington
- Johan Bollen, Indiana University
Starting May 16, 2012, Martin Fenner will join PLoS as the ALM Technical Lead. Martin announced the news on his PLoS blog Goobledygook last month. Martin has been a leading advocate of scholarly metrics and has worked on several article usage applications. As ALM Technical Lead, he will not only help with the development of the PLoS ALM application, he will also lead developer outreach for the project.
Further information on all these developments are available on a new ALM website launched today, please take a moment to check it out. We also encourage you to visit our journals and to view ALM by clicking on an article metrics tab.