Academic Productivity

Koblenz (Germany), 14-15 June 2011
An ACM Web Science Conference 2011 Workshop

Call for papers

The increasing quantity and velocity of scientific output is presenting scholars with a deluge of data. There is growing concern that scholarly output may be swamping traditional mechanisms for both pre-publication filtering (e.g peer review) and post-publication impact filtering (e.g. the Journal Impact Factor).

Increasing scholarly use of Web2.0 tools like CiteULike, Mendeley, Twitter, and blog-style article commenting presents an opportunity to create new filters. Metrics based on a diverse set of social sources could yield broader, richer, and more timely assessments of current and potential scholarly impact. Realizing this, many authors have begun to call for investigation of these “altmetrics.” (see altmetrics.org)

Despite the growing speculation and early exploratory investigation into the value of altmetrics, however, there remains little concrete, objective research into the properties of these metrics: their validity, their potential value and flaws, and their relationship to established measures. Nor has there been any large umbrella to bring these multiple perspectives together. The altmetrics11 workshop aims to  encourage both these. Submissions are invited from a variety of areas:

• New metrics based on social media
• Tracking science communication on the Web
• Relation between traditional metrics and altmetrics
• Peer-review and altmetrics
• Tools for gathering, analyzing, disseminating altmetrics

Important Dates

2-page abstracts due	March 31, 2011
Acceptance and abstract publication	April 14, 2011
Open pre-workshop discussion	April 14, 2011 – June 14, 2011
Workshop at WebSci 11	June 14 – June 15, 2011
Discussion closed	June 30, 2011
Invitations for post-workshop proceedings	TBA

Submissions

Prospective authors should submit 2-page extended abstracts (max. 1000 words, not including references). If necessary, the workshop organizers will select the most relevant, original, and significant abstracts for presentation. Experimental results will be given preference, followed by technical reports on working altmetrics tools and position papers. All selected submissions will be published online for open peer review and discussion. Authors are encouraged to participate in the discussions of their work. Based on the presentations and online discussion, selected authors may be asked to submit full papers for peer-reviewed proceedings.

Location

The workshop is hosted by the ACM Web Science Conference 2011 (Koblenz, Germany). This interdisciplinary conference focuses on advances in studying the full range of social-technical relationships on the Web. Please visit the Web Science site for more information.

Organizers

• Paul Groth – VU University Amsterdam, NL
• Jason Priem –University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
• Dario Taraborelli – Wikimedia Foundation, USA

The organizers have an interdisciplinary background covering Sociology, Information and Library Science and Computer Science.