Colleagues/ An Important Article, But ... Not As Radical As I Would Suggest ... [:-) See The Bottom Of This Posting For My View(s) / Links /Gerry Neylon C, Wu S (2009) Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of Scientific Impact. PLoS Biol 7(11): e1000242. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000242 / Published: November 17, 2009 [snip] "'Other Indicators of Impact' include ratings and comments, which, like page views, are immediate but may offer more insight because users are more likely to have read the article and found it compelling enough to respond. Additional other indicators are bookmarks, used by some people to keep track of articles of interest to them, and blog posts and trackbacks, which indicate where else on the Web the article has been mentioned and can be useful for linking to a broader discussion. It is clear that all of the types of data provide different dimensions, which together can give a clearer picture of an article's impact. [snip] As recently shown ... , scientific impact is not a simple concept that can be described by a single number. The key point is that journal impact factor is a very poor measure of article impact. And, obviously, the fact that an article is highly influential by any measure does not necessarily mean it should be. Many researchers will continue to rely on journals as filters, but the more you can incorporate effective filtering tools into your research process, the more you will stay up-to-date with advancing knowledge. The question is not whether you should take article-level metrics seriously but how you can use them most effectively to assist your own research endeavours. We need sophisticated metrics to ask sophisticated questions about different aspects of scientific impact and we need further research into both the most effective measurement techniques and the most effective uses of these in policy and decision making. For this reason we strongly support efforts to collect and present diverse types of article-level metrics without any initial presumptions as to which metric is most valuable. [snip] As Clay Shirky famously said ... , you can complain about information overload but the only way to deal with it is to build and use better filters. It is no longer sufficient to depend on journals as your only filter; instead, it is time to start evaluating papers on their own merits. Our only options are to publish less or to filter more effectively, and any response that favours publishing less doesn't make sense, either logistically, financially, or ethically. The issue is not how to stop people from publishing, it is how to build better filters, both systematically and individually. At the same time, we can use available tools, networks, and tools built on networks to help with this task. So in the spirit of science, let's keep learning and experimenting, and keep the practice and dissemination of science evolving for the times."

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While These Insights and Suggestions Are An Important Contribution To The Conversation , In Many Ways The Views And Recommendations Are Far From Radical [:-)] <<<

See My Presentation Delivered At the _Workshop On Peer Review_, Trieste, Italy, May 23-24 2003 "Alternative Peer Review: Quality Management for 21st Century Scholarship"

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See In Particular > 'Seize The E!' Section >>> "Embrace the potential of the digital environment to facilitate access, retrieval, use, _and_ navigation of electronic scholarship"

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It's A Large PPT (200+ Slides) But IMHO ... Well Worth The Experience [:-)]<<

AND The Big Picture(sm): Visual Browsing in Web and non-Web Databases To ReQuote T.S. Elloit > "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge that we have lost in information?"/ T.S. Eliot / The Rock (1934) pt.1 To Quote Me > "It's Not About Publication, It's About Ideas"

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We Now Have The Computational Power To Make Real-Time Conceptual Navigation An EveryDay Occurrence <<<

Full Text Of Article / PPT / and Website Available At [ http://tinyurl.com/yzoeqg9 ] !! Let Us Use It To Navigate Ideas !!! Indeed Let Us Continue "... experimenting, and keep the practice and dissemination of science evolving for the times." EnJOY! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu There Is No Answer, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace