Zusammenfassung
What is the scientific and social impact of my research publications? This question has been of
interest to scientists and scholars since the inception of modern science 400 years ago. But it was
hard to answer. This may now be changing. Scholarship is transforming into a variety of digital
networked forms. These developments have created new possibilities and challenges in the
evaluation of the quality of research. This is of interest to research funders assessing the quality of
research. It is also relevant to the individual researchers interested in assessing their career
development.
This report explores the explosion of tracking tools that have accompanied the surge of web based
information instruments. Is it possible to monitor ‘real-time’ how new research findings are being
read, cited, used and transformed in practical results and applications? And what are the potential
risks and disadvantages of the new tracking tools? This report aims to contribute to a better
understanding of these developments by providing a detailed assessment of the currently available
novel tools and methodologies. A total of 16 quite different tools are assessed.
The report concludes that web based academic publishing is producing a variety of novel
information filters. These allow the researcher to make some sort of limited self-assessment with
respect to the response to his/her work. However, this does not mean that these technologies and
databases can also legitimately be used in research assessments. For this application, they need to
adhere to a far stricter protocol of data quality and indicator reliability and validity. Most new tools
do not (yet) comply with these more strict quality criteria.
The report therefore advises to start a concerted research programme in the dynamics, properties,
and potential use of new web based metrics which relates these new measures to the already
established indicators of publication impact. Its goal would be to contribute to the development of
more useful tools for the scientific and scholarly community. This programme should monitor at
least the following tools: F1000, Microsoft Academic Research, Total-Impact, PlosONE altmetrics,
and Google Scholar. The programme should moreover develop the following key research themes:
concepts of new web metrics and altmetrics; standardisation of tools and data; and the use and
normalisation of the new metrics.
Nutzer