A comprehensive, state-of-the-art examination of the changing ways we measure scholarly performance and research impact.

Bibliometrics has moved well beyond the mere tracking of bibliographic citations. The web enables new ways to measure scholarly productivity and impact, making available tools and data that can reveal patterns of intellectual activity and impact that were previously invisible: mentions, acknowledgments, endorsements, downloads, recommendations, blog posts, tweets. This book describes recent theoretical and practical advances in metrics-based research, examining a variety of alternative metrics—or “altmetrics”—while also considering the ethical and cultural consequences of relying on metrics to assess the quality of scholarship.

Once the domain of information scientists and mathematicians, bibliometrics is now a fast-growing, multidisciplinary field that ranges from webometrics to scientometrics to influmetrics. The contributors to Beyond Bibliometrics discuss the changing environment of scholarly publishing, the effects of open access and Web 2.0 on genres of discourse, novel analytic methods, and the emergence of next-generation metrics in a performance-conscious age.

Contributors
Mayur Amin, Judit Bar-Ilan, Johann Bauer, Lutz Bornmann, Benjamin F. Bowman, Kevin W. Boyack, Blaise Cronin, Ronald Day, Nicola De Bellis, Jonathan Furner, Yves Gingras, Stefanie Haustein, Edwin Henneken, Peter A. Hook, Judith Kamalski, Richard Klavans, Kayvan Kousha, Michael Kurtz, Mark Largent, Julia Lane, Vincent Larivière, Loet Leydesdorff, Werner Marx, Katherine W. McCain, Margit Palzenberger, Andrew Plume, Jason Priem, Rebecca Rosen, Hermann Schier, Hadas Shema, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Mike Thelwall, Daril Vilhena, Jevin West, Paul Wouters

Blaise Cronin is Rudy Professor of Information Science at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of The Hand of Science: Academic Writing and Its Rewards.

Blaise Cronin's profile page

Cassidy R. Sugimoto is Associate Professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University Bloomington and the coeditor of Beyond Bibliometrics (MIT Press).

Cassidy R. Sugimoto's profile page

With caution and care, decisions about the future directions, funding and staffing of science will be better informed by the approaches and developments discussed in Beyond Bibliometrics. What we now need from this book's expert group is an accessible working narrative to guide the rest of us in our day jobs.—Nature—

This well-constructed and balanced compilation should be required reading for all information scientists, faculty, and administrators navigating the murky and increasingly institutionalized field of metrics-based assessment, in both the academy and science policy. Anyone involved in developing and assessing collections or answering accrediting and administrative questions related to the academic value of those collections using bibliometrics must read this book.

—Collection Management—

Beyond Bibliometrics is an invaluable collection and guide for librarians involved in research evaluation and students and researchers in the fields of information science, science studies, and scientometrics.

—Maria Forsman, Library & Information Science Research—