Safecast, a non-profit that seemed to spontaneously form following the accident, began collecting and publishing radiation readings, developing measurement tools, and analyzing data. Safecast is an interesting example of citizen science for a number of reasons. First, Safecast is participant-driven.
Interesting blogpost by David Worlock, chairman of Business Information Industry Association (BIIA) on the thinking that
Science is based upon measurement and evaluation, yet the activities of scientists have themselves been less measured and evaluated than the subjects of their research.
Compared with the current practices, all of which are based on citations only, the inclusion of altmetrics plus online usage statistics and post-publication peer-review in an open access world will represent a true revolution in the way that science is perceived by all, scientists included.
Google Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. While most researchers are familiar with the well-established journals in their field, that is often not the case with newer publications or publications in related fields - there’re simply too many of them to keep track of! Scholar Metrics summarize recent citations to many publications, to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research.
Here are some thoughts on altmetrics by Jenny Delasalle.
The problem with web stats and altmetrics is that there are potentially a lot of sources which will all measure the stats for different versions of the same item, or different elements of the same output, in different ways. This sort of thing is a driver for publication in an open access (OA) journal with one canonical copy of an article in just one place online: the so called “gold” route to OA.
It’s a valid argument. One of the main reasons why impact factors are so heavily relied upon is caused by the fact that it is easy to argue against alternatives. The question then is what does a download count say about a paper? Very little I guess. It just indicates how many people have looked at it—it does not say anything about the quality of the content. This assessment can hardly be automated; a crowdsourced solution is probably more feasible.