Alternative forms of research assessment and impact-NISO Plus

There's general agreement that over-reliance on the journal Impact Factor (IF) and similar metrics in evaluation gives too much weight to one small (if important) aspect of research, while overlooking many other forms of contribution. However, finding meaningful ways of measuring those other contributions has proved challenging. This session will highlight some of the more meaningful metrics now being developed, and the next steps in achieving their widespread adoption.

The NISO Plus conference brings people together from across the global information community to share updates and participate in conversations about our shared challenges and opportunities. The focus is on identifying concrete next steps to improve information flow and interoperability, and help solve existing and potential future problems. Please join us to help address the key issues facing our community of librarians, publishers, researchers, and more — today and tomorrow!

Cameron Neylon is Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University and well known agitator for opening up the process of research. His current work focusses on how the cultures of research affect and effect change in research communications. He speaks regularly on issues of Open Science including Open Access publication, Open Data, and Open Source as well as the wider technical and social issues of applying the opportunities the internet brings to the practice of science. He was named as a SPARC Innovator in July 2010 for work on the Panton Principles and was a co-author of the Altmetrics manifesto and the Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructures.

Melroy Almeida currently works at the Australian Access Federation looking after the Australian ORCID Consortium as the Engagement and Support Lead. Melroy is interested in all things to do with persistent identifiers and knowledge graphs and how they can be used with the research ecosystem.

Rachel Borchardt is the Associate Director for Research and Instructional Services and Science Librarian at American University. Rachel’s research interests focus on equity in scholarly publications and research evaluation. When not working, Rachel is a mom of 2, and drinks tea, plays pinball and runs to avoid staring into the existential void for too long.