In June 2013, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded NISO a grant to undertake a two-phase initiative to explore, identify, and advance standards and/or best practices related to a new suite of potential metrics in the community. This initiative was a direct outgrowth of a breakout discussion group during the altmetrics 12 meeting in Chicago, IL. This project is an important step in the development and adoption of new assessment metrics, which include usage-based metrics, social media references, and network behavioral analysis. In addition, this project will explore potential assessment criteria for non-traditional research outputs, such as data sets, visualizations, software, and other applications. After the first phase, which will expose areas for potential standardization, the community will collectively prioritize those potential projects. The second phase will be to advance and develop those standards/best practices prioritized by the community and approved by the membership.
NISO has released a draft of the Phase One White Paper and welcomes comments on the draft. The white paper is the summary of the findings from those meetings and interviews, along with the identification of potential action items for further work in Phase II of the project. More than 250 ideas were generated by participants in the meetings and interviews that were part of Phase one of the proejct. condense these to 25 action items in nine categories: definitions, research outputs, discovery, research evaluation, data quality and gaming, grouping and aggregation, context, stakeholders’ perspectives, and adoption. You can access the white paper via this link.
