Rise of 'Altmetrics' Revives Questions About How to Measure Impact of Research - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views
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"Campuswide there's a little sensitivity toward measuring faculty output," she says. Altmetrics can reveal that nobody's talking about a piece of work, at least in ways that are trackable—and a lack of interest is hardly something researchers want to advertise in their tenure-and-promotion dossiers. "What are the political implications of having a bunch of stuff online that nobody has tweeted about or Facebooked or put on Mendeley?"
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iaravps on 10 Jun 13What about uncited papers?
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"The folks I've talked to are like, 'Yes, it does have some value, but in terms of the reality of my tenure-and-promotion process, I have to focus on other things,'" she says.
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As that phrasing indicates, altmetrics data can't reveal everything. Mr. Roberts points out that if someone tweets about a paper, "they could be making fun of it." If a researcher takes the time to download a paper into an online reference manager like Mendeley or Zotero, however, he considers that a more reliable sign that the work has found some kind of audience. "My interpretation is that because they downloaded it, they found it useful," he says.
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