Metrics, Identifiers, & Profiles - UC Office of Scholarly Communications

"How should scholarly communications be evaluated? Because scholars’ work varies so widely, it’s impossible to find quantitative measurements that work equally well for everyone, but more and more tools are being developed to provide a broader picture of a work’s relevance and importance in its field and beyond."

Metrics

"Scholars have long been evaluated based on how many publications they have, and which journals or presses they publish with. Sometimes these journals are ranked or scored with systems like Impact Factors, Eigenfactors, and other journal ranking systems."

• UC Irvine Libraries guide on Journal Impacts
• UCLA guide on Journal Impacts
• UC Merced Library guide on Impact Factor
• UC Irvine: Research Impacts Using Citation Metrics  

Source: California Digital Library - Office of Scholarly Communications   <More>

Data Citation Formats - online guide

http://datapub.cdlib.org/datacitation/

Helpful information on basic data citation, citing dynamic data, deep data citation, and various discipline specific citation.

Prepared by John Krause, UC Curation Center, California Digital Library,University of California 

Article: Data publication consensus and controversies - 2014

Kratz J and Strasser C (2014) Data publication consensus and controversies [v1; ref status: approved with reservations 1, http://f1000r.es/3ag] F1000Research 2014, 3:94 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.4264)

Abstract

The movement to bring datasets into the scholarly record as first class research products (validated, preserved, cited, and credited) has been inching forward for some time, but now the pace is quickening. As data publication venues proliferate, significant debate continues over formats, processes, and terminology. Here, we present an overview of data publication initiatives underway and the current conversation, highlighting points of consensus and issues still in contention. Data publication implementations differ in a variety of factors, including the kind of documentation, the location of the documentation relative to the data, and how the data is validated. Publishers may present the data as supplemental material to a journal article, with a descriptive “data paper,” or independently. Complicating the situation, different initiatives and communities use the same terms to refer distinct but overlapping concepts. For instance, the term “published” means that the data is publicly available and citable to virtually everyone, but it may or may not imply that the data has been peer-reviewed. In turn, what is meant by data peer review is far from defined; standards and processes encompass the full range employed in reviewing the literature, plus some novel variations. Basic data citation is a point of consensus, but the general agreement on the core elements of a dataset citation frays if the data is dynamic or part of a larger set. Even as data publication is being defined, some are looking past publication to other metaphors, notably “data as software,” for solutions to the more stubborn problems.

New OA journal 'Scientific Data' from Nature

Scientific Data

http://www.nature.com/sdata/

"Scientific Data is an open-access, online-only publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets, and exists to help you publish, discover and reuse research data.

Scientific Data’s main article-type is the Data Descriptor: peer-reviewed, scientific publications that provide an in-depth look at research datasets.

Data Descriptors are a combination of traditional scientific publication content and structured information curated in-house, and are designed to maximize reuse and enable searching, linking and data mining.

Each is peer-reviewed under the supervision of our Editorial Board.

Data Descriptors include detailed descriptions of the methods used to collect the data and technical analyses supporting the quality of the measurements, but do not contain tests of new scientific hypotheses, extensive analyses aimed at providing new scientific insights, or descriptions of fundamentally new scientific methods.

Hosted on nature.com — the home of over 80 journals published by Nature Publishing Group and the destination for millions of scientists globally every month — Data Descriptors are disseminated to the widest possible audience through a programme of continuous online publication.

All accepted Data Descriptors will be published, under an open-access licence selected by the authors, on payment of an article-processing charge (APC) that also includes the data-record curation process."

Editorial: More Bang for Your Byte. 

Scientific Data 1, Article number: 140010 ​doi:10.1038/sdata.2014.10

Beyond Bibliometrics - new book from MIT Press

Beyond Bibliometrics

Harnessing Multidimensional Indicators of Scholarly Impact

Edited by Blaise Cronin and Cassidy R. Sugimoto

Overview

Bibliometrics has moved well beyond the mere tracking of bibliographic citations. The web enables new ways to measure scholarly productivity and impact, making available tools and data that can reveal patterns of intellectual activity and impact that were previously invisible: mentions, acknowledgments, endorsements, downloads, recommendations, blog posts, tweets. This book describes recent theoretical and practical advances in metrics-based research, examining a variety of alternative metrics—or “altmetrics"—while also considering the ethical and cultural consequences of relying on metrics to assess the quality of scholarship.

Once the domain of information scientists and mathematicians, bibliometrics is now a fast-growing, multidisciplinary field that ranges from webometrics to scientometrics to influmetrics. The contributors to Beyond Bibliometrics discuss the changing environment of scholarly publishing, the effects of open access and Web 2.0 on genres of discourse, novel analytic methods, and the emergence of next-generation metrics in a performance-conscious age.

Contributors
Mayur Amin, Judit Bar-Ilan, Johann Bauer, Lutz Bornmann, Benjamin F. Bowman, Kevin W. Boyack, Blaise Cronin, Ronald Day, Nicola De Bellis, Jonathan Furner, Yves Gingras, Stefanie Haustein, Edwin Henneken, Peter A. Hook, Judith Kamalski, Richard Klavans, Kayvan Kousha, Michael Kurtz, Mark Largent, Julia Lane, Vincent Larivière, Loet Leydesdorff, Werner Marx, Katherine W. McCain, Margit Palzenberger, Andrew Plume, Jason Priem, Rebecca Rosen, Hermann Schier, Hadas Shema, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Mike Thelwall, Daril Vilhena, Jevin West, Paul Wouters

About the Editors

Blaise Cronin is Rudy Professor of Information Science at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of The Hand of Science: Academic Writing and Its Rewards.

Cassidy R. Sugimoto is Assistant Professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University Bloomington.

Source:  https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/beyond-bibliometrics

SPARC Kickoff Webinar for Open Access Week 2014

SPARC webinar on Monday, May 19th,  to help kickoff your planning for this year's International Open Access Week 2014. The webcast featured a panel of experts who have organized successful Open Access Week events in years past. Each described their approach to celebrating the week, give advice on ensuring a successful event, and outline any challenges that other organizers might prepare for. While Open Access Week is five months away (October 21-26, 2014), beginning to make arrangements now can ensure a smooth planning process and provide the foundation for successful events to meaningfully advance the conversation around Open Access on your campus.

The expert panelists included:
Marianne Reed, University of Kansas: Marianne has helped spearhead many years of successful Open Access Week programs at the University of Kansas on behalf of the Libraries’ Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright, targeting students and faculty. The events have even included a presentation by their local Congressperson, Representative Kevin Yoder, on the topic of Open Access.

Daniel Mutonga, Medical Students' Association of Kenya (MSAKE):
As the former president of the Medical Students' Association of Kenya, Daniel led the organization's extremely successful Open Access Week campaign in 2012 which hosted events at medical schools across the country and, in one week, educated a signficant portion of Kenya's medical students about Open Access.

Anneliese Taylor, University of California, San Francisco:
As Assistant Director for Scholarly Communications & Collections, Anneliese has helped lead UCSF's participation in Open Access Week with events that put the issue into local context and support the successful implementaiton of the system-wide open access policy at UCSF.

See more details and the archive of the webinar and related resources. 

ASCE targeting faculty posting copies of their own work - 16 May 2014

General info (May 16, 2014)

http://torrentfreak.com/publishers-targets-university-researchers-pirating-articles-140516/

Specific case re: the University of California system (March 13, 2014)

http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2014/03/asce-takedown-notices/

Avoiding a DMCA takedown notice

For any UC authors worried about receiving such a takedown notice, here are the tips we provided when we heard about the Elsevier notices some campuses were receiving last year:

• Post the correct version of your article.  Usually the author’s final version – after peer review but before the publisher formats it in the journal layout – is allowed for self-archiving, and this is the version the open access policy supports.  Relatively few publishers allow authors to post the published version of their article.
• UC faculty adopted an Open Access Policy on July 24, 2013. If you’re dealing with an article published after the policy passed – and if your journal does not ask you for a waiver or embargo – you are expected to post your article in UC’s eScholarship Repository and can make it available anywhere else you like. Make sure to use the author’s final version (see above).
• For articles not covered by the policy, read what you signed. You can also check the journal’s policy page, or the SHERPA/RoMEO database of journal policies. Often you can post the author’s final version, but you may need to wait until a year or two after publication.
• Compare the policies of different journals in your field. If you have multiple publishing options, opt for the ones that give you more control over your work, and not those that are going to send legal notices to your university. The University of California will keep this page updated with information about publishers that have agreed to respect authors’ rights, and how publishers are responding to the UC Open Access Policy.
• Get help understanding your options. UC Libraries staff are available to answer your questions.

More details from the UC Office of Schoalrly Communications website