Presented at the 11th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing on 22 November 2016.
I explain how the library engages with groups and individuals across the London School of Economics to help them discover new audiences paying attention to their publications. And how altmetrics data can be used to engage researchers, report to internal assessments, and to boost the profile of departments.
1. Engaging your audience
Using altmetrics to drive faculty outreach and
raise the profile of expertise within an institution
Lucy Lambe, Scholarly Communications Officer
London School of Economics and Political Science
l.lambe@lse.ac.uk
@lucylambe
4. What are altmetrics?
Altmetrics are alternative and non-
traditional metrics that capture the online
engagement relating to a specific research
output. They provide a measure of the
attention an item is receiving from sources
such as the mainstream media, social
networks, policy makers, and other
scholarly and non-scholarly forums
5. Altmetrics are not intended as either a
replacement or improvement on traditional
citation metrics
On their own, altmetrics do not accurately
measure impact, but can provide some
measure of the level of engagement your
work has with the outside world
No metric on its own can effectively
assess the quality of a research
output – see the findings of the
Metric Tide (2015)
But…
6. Why do we use altmetrics at LSE?
Institutional strategy:
“We will engage with diverse
communities to the reach, influence
and impact of our research on public
understanding and debate.”
“What does success look like?
Our research impacts on national
and global debates, it shapes
strategies to address critical
challenges in society.”
7. Why do we use altmetrics at LSE?
Aim of the School since its foundation: “the
betterment of society”
LSE’s academics are good at getting their
research and themselves in front of the right
people – advisors to government, international
organisations, charities. We want to know how
good and where they could improve
Altmetric Explorer tracks policy documents for
references to LSE research
8. Why do we use altmetrics at LSE?
Recommendation 5: Institutions should be
given more flexibility to showcase their
interdisciplinary and collaborative impacts
by submitting ‘institutional’ level impact
case studies, part of a new institutional
level assessment.
Recommendation 7: Guidance on the REF
should make it clear that impact case
studies should not be narrowly interpreted,
need not solely focus on socio-economic
impacts but should also include impact on
government policy, on public engagement
and understanding, on cultural life, on
academic impacts outside the field, and
impacts on teaching.
10. Case Study: Using data from Altmetric
Explorer to engage with researchers
Traditional approach
– Staff newsletter (weekly)
– Research Briefing (monthly)
– Subject librarian training
A more targeted approach
– Compiled lists of specific mentions
– Sent to individuals and research centre
admins
11. Dr Ernestina Coast
Associate Professor of Population Studies
Department of Social Policy
“I have found tracking RTs useful to
see who is interested in my research
… It’s important to be able to give
examples of non-academic reach, for
example, to funders”
12. Professor Martin Knapp
Professor of Social Policy
Department of Social Policy
“Within my research centre we are putting
a lot of effort into achieving better
connections to and impacts on non-
academic groups … It is very good to hear
about this ‘reach’ – and this is exactly
what we need to be able to refer to when
thinking about impact”
13. Case Study: Using altmetric data for a PhD
by publication and networking as an ECR
Social Policy PhD student writing a
thesis by publication
Tracking papers in the Altmetric
Explorer to demonstrate impact at
submission stage
Postdoctoral job applications – altmetric
score can demonstrate attention
14. Useful to see who is talking about her
research, then arrange to meet at
conferences
Works both ways – another researcher
found her Tweets about his work via
Altmetric
15. Case study: Managing a department’s social
media accounts and blogging
Department of Media and
Communications
Check Twitter and Facebook mentions
and comment on posts mentioning
their research
Policy documents have more of an
impact for the department, but Tweets
reach a larger audience
16. Share blog posts or news items on
their own Twitter feed
What’s popular on social media informs
what they should highlight on the
departmental blog
Currently putting together an internal
report to provide data for grant
applications and to inform the decisions
around next REF submission
17. Case study: Development of impact case
studies
Research Office
Using Altmetric Explorer to discover
unknown “big hitters” that are
making impact
Provides a starting point for
conversations between research
office and academics
18. Policy documents are most important
for impact case studies
Promoting the Explorer in training
sessions
19. Case study: Adding altmetrics to bibliometric
analyses for research centres
International Growth Centre
Library provides bibliometric analysis service
to research groups and centres
Expressed interest in how their papers are
being used beyond citations in journals
Particularly interested in mentions from policy
documents and university syllabuses
20. Negative feedback?
Lack of time to learn a new tool and
explore altmetric data
Put off by a lack of activity / low score
Some misunderstanding of altmetrics
or a dislike of metrics in general
21. Future plans…
• DOIs for grey literature (e.g. reports, conference
papers) to enable tracking
• Current work on statement on the responsible
use of metrics
• Altmetric Explorer v2 released last month –
requires new training materials
Altmetrics help us know who the audience is for current research, and the potential audiences for future, related research.
The Altmetric Explorer is one tool to help find and analyse this information, and at LSE this is managed by the library. But who are the audiences for this data?
In this session I’ll be explaining how the library engages with groups and individuals across LSE to help them discover new audiences paying attention to their publications. And we’ll also look at how altmetrics data can be used to engage researchers, report to internal assessments, and to boost the profile of departments.
LSE library was founded in 1896 and to this day retains the formal title of British Library of Political and Economic Science.
The library is not just for LSE staff and students but includes a wider remit; the library allows members of the public to register for a card and access the library.
The library was established, as it’s title suggests, to specialise in economic and political science, and that remains the core of the library’s collection. It’s strong in these areas, particularly government publications and statistical data.
About 1200 peer reviewed articles / year
~100 books
~400 working papers and reports
Publishing ~700 blog posts (not all authored by LSE researchers)
[stats from LSERO contents]
Institutional strategy
From its foundation, the School has sought to disseminate its research to fellow academics, the media, opinion formers and the general public.
Its website, which includes an Experts Directory and an impact portal, invites audiences to join the global debate at LSE.
Research Online - the institutional repository - provides access to a diverse range of research produced by the School.
Everyone is welcome to attend the LSE's public events, where some of the most influential figures in the social sciences and humanities can be heard for free.
Academics are in continual demand as commentators, analysts and advisers to governments, policy makers and charities, both in the UK and internationally.
LSE academics act as advisers to governments, serve on commissions and are seconded to national and international organisations
Naturally, we want to see how well we’re doing at this – the stuff that goes beyond journal articles and citations.
Impact and REF
mentioned how important getting our research out beyond the academy is for the mission of the school and to align with the general subject matter of what is studied and researched here.
We are also measured by the government on a national scale roughly every 6 or 7 years, this is known as the research excellence framework. The REF requires impact statements from researchers on how their work has made an impact outside academia.
This has been further recommended for the next REF, as summarised by the Stern report which has outlined how the government should perform the next assessment.
There is particular mention of impact on government policy, public engagement and understanding, cultural life, impacts on teaching and impact from interdisciplinary research on an institutional level.
When we first got the Altmetric explorer implemented for LSE, we tried to let our researchers know about it, to encourage use, by quite traditional means. In other words, notices appeared in staff newsletters and our subject librarians received some training in what it does in order to then promote it to their departments
This was not very successful and we found the number of academics using and registering with the explorer was very low
So we then tried something more targeted:
We compiled a list of mentions highlighted by the Explorer – policy mentions and news stories mostly
These were sent to individual researchers or research centre admins as was appropriate. We worked with the subject librarians on this.
This approach was much more successful and we had more responses for more information and requests to continue sending more of the same.
As scholarly comms officer I am interested in encouraging a more open way of working, including online sharing and networking. Altmetrics enable me to demonstrate the various places people are finding scholarly work beyond high IF journals, and encourage researchers to do more to share their work online.
An example of the response we received from our outreach activities
PhD student from the department of Social Policy will be able to track altmetric activity sooner than traditional citation metrics. For example, mendeley readers have a moderate correlation with citations later in the life cycle of a paper. This will demonstrate the impact potential of her papers before they have been cited in other journals.
[stock image: CC0]
Can use online attention to start online conversations which hopefully lead to offline meetings at seminars and conferences.
Another researcher reached out to her after finding her talking about his work on social media – mentions appeared in his own altmetrics.
The chance to create relationships across social media can provide valuable opportunities for international collaboration to an early career researcher.
Checking Twitter and Facebook mentions and leaving comments has led to increased numbers following the department social media accounts
Policy documents mean impact – again this is hugely important for departments and the School as a whole, societal impact is part of the institution’s mission. However they recognise that Tweets potentially reach a larger, and broader, audience
[image: Statistics machine room, LSE 1964]
The department has its own Twitter feed and will share any blog or news items via this channel to further amplify the impact of those items.
This internal report will look at publications from 2013 onwards (so, from the end of the last REF period) to find any research which has made more impact than just citations. This will be a balancing act, as traditional citations are still a big indicator of impact for the department and the School. The library will offer support with this analysis, and we look forward to finding out how they use the data in grant applications.
The department of media and communications is fortunate to have a communications intern working on this. One of the issues departments find when starting out with altmetric data is finding the time to learn how to use it and how to interpret the data. The library will be continuing to provide support and training in order to engage further with departments.
Like most research institutions, LSE has a problem with keeping track of what its researchers are publishing and other communication activities.
The explorer helps to keep track of what’s getting published and getting a lot of attention. The Impact manager based in the research office can start tracking this attention earlier and make contact with academics to start developing impact case studies (which are collected and displayed on the LSE website). Altmetric data provides a source of additional information for inclusion in these impact case studies.
Useful to collect this information and follow up as it happens, rather than in 4-5 years when required for a REF impact case study
Particularly where research appears in policy documents.
The research office is also promoting the explorer in training sessions with researchers, to encourage more academics to track their own work.
[image: Dr David Owen, LSE 1981]
The library provides a service to departments, research groups and individuals to support their use and interpretation of bibliometrics. Most requests are for citation impact data and productivity of research groups and h-index for researchers.
Recent work with the international growth centre saw a request for altmetric data to complement traditional bibliometrics. They were particularly interested in finding out where their research was included in university syllabuses. Unfortunately this function currently only covers books, but perhaps it will include journal articles in the future. Again, they are keen to find out about mentions in policy papers.
[image: students in a computer room, LSE 1981]
When you begin to engage with researchers and staff outside the library, you get good and bad results. There has been some negative feedback, mostly around the lack of time, which everyone suffers from in universities.
Everyone has a lack of time to do anything, so we have to start with the benefits up front. The case studies used in this presentation could be a good starting point for us to take our advocacy further.
When some academics have logged in and see a low score or no score, they think altmetric has nothing to offer them. We need to create the full circle of how to promote your work on social media, then use altmetrics to measure the impact of this. The School recently acquired a tool called Kudos to attempt to do just this.
There is a misunderstanding of metrics, and this requires us to responsibly promote and explain the full range, from h-index to Mendeley readers.
I think this has given us some ideas for where our advocacy efforts need to go, and perhaps develop new training on how to use the information found in the altmetric explorer
[image: Protest against Government policy on overseas student fees, 27th November 1979]
