Bookmetrix will change the way we look at books
ICYMI: Just what is Bookmetrix?
Developed in partnership between Springer and Altmetric, Bookmetrix is the first platform of its kind to offer integrated traditional and non-traditional metrics for books and chapters. Designed to give authors, editors and readers easy access to this combined data all in one place for the first time, Bookmetrix helps to set a new standard for monitoring and reporting the activity surrounding a book post-publication. It’s picking up notice, too, as it was recently announced as a finalist in the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2015!
Got it…so what does that all mean?
Up until recently, book authors and editors would be updated on an annual basis on the downloads of their ebook. As many books are not indexed in either Scopus or in Thomson Reuters’ Book Citation Index, authors knew very little about the impact and reach of their book. We think the story behind a book doesn’t finish when it gets published; book and chapters, like journal articles, are discussed both in the academic realm and in society. We therefore now offer title and chapter level metrics for all our 196.915 books and 3.645.246 chapters. For each one of them, and if available, you can find citations, online mentions, Mendeley readers, downloads and reviews. If you are interested in the story behind Bookmetrix, do read this excellent blog post from Altmetric’s Jean Liu.
Let’s have a look at an example; Opening Science – The Evolving Guide on How the Internet is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing edited by Sönke Bartling and Sascha Friesike, as shown on SpringerLink. In fact, on the SpringerLink page of all our books and chapter, you will find a new table with book metrics. You will only find those metrics that are available for a particular book. Each one of the words, citations, mentions, readers, reviews and downloads is clickable and will redirect you to the subsequent details page on the Bookmetrix platform. All of the metrics are visible for everyone and updated on a daily/weekly basis.
When moving to the Bookmetrix details page, on the left side you will find some of the book’s metadata, and underneath the accumulated metrics for the book (summary). Underneath are the individual score for all of the chapters. Clicking on one of them will open the subsequent scores on the right-hand side. Data for the Citations tab originates from CrossRef and will show you where your book or chapter was cited, but also how many times it was cited per year.
The next tab will display the number of online mentions. The data originates from Altmetric who watch social media sites, newspapers, government policy documents and other sources for mentions of scholarly content for links containing a DOI. In our example they have traced 10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8 which is the DOI for our book.
Remember: If you want to cite a book in a book or journal, always add a DOI as this is the only unique identifier to the content in contrast to ISBN that refer to the content form (hardcover, softcover, e-book, etc).
The mentions tab will also display the Altmetric donut although without score. You will find how many times a certain source mentioned the book online and with See all mentions you can find more details of the various mentions. Underneath you’ll find a timeline of the mentions so you can trace back the impact of certain actions e.g. a conference where the book was mentioned or a marketing campaign.
Data for the next tab, Readers, originates from Mendeley and refers to the number of people who have a reference of a book or chapter in their Mendeley library. In addition, they provide insight in both demographics, e.g. where people are using the book, in which discipline and at which stage of their career.
Data for the Downloads tab originates from our own data warehouse. Here we store our COUNTER complient download data. Currently data dates back to mid-2012 when we moved to our new (and current) SpringerLink platform. Download data from the previous SpringerLink platform (pre-2012) may be added at a later stage. This will display the total number of chapters downloaded per month over time. A peak in downloads could correspond e.g. with a new citation or online mention.
The last tab consists of data from our own book review team who monitor where our books are reviewed, mainly in academic journals. Parts of these reviews are displayed on this page and at a later stage we should be able to link out to the source.
