Category Archives: Library

Library, May 2016, Notes from the library

Notes From the Library…Measuring Research Impact: Altmetrics

May 16, 2016 Laura Pavlech

What are altmetrics?

The graduate student who coined the term ‘altmetrics’ in a 2010 tweet has defined altmetrics as “the study and use of scholarly impact measures based on activity in online tools and environments” (Priem, 2012). The term is often used to describe any alternative, non-citation based measure of research impact, such as:

Number of times an article has been viewed or downloaded from a journal website, or database
Number of times an article has been exported to a citation manager
Number of times an article has been shared via email or on Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites
Mentions in the mainstream media

How are altmetrics different from traditional citation metrics?

Altmetrics are generated rapidly, as opposed to citations which take time to accumulate. Altmetrics capture data from a variety of sources, both within and beyond the scholarly community, versus traditional citations, which only capture information from published scholarly works. Altmetrics also recognize research products beyond the peer-reviewed journal article, such as data sets and code (Khodiyar, Rowlett and Lawrence, 2014).

Where can I find altmetrics?

Look for altmetrics when viewing an article on a journal’s website: Many publishers, such as PLoS, provide the number of times an article has been viewed, shared, saved or download from their site.

Look for an Altmetric score: Altmetric (http://www.altmetric.com/) monitors online activity for mentions of scholarly articles. The collected data is used to calculate an Altmetric score, a measure of the quality and quantity of attention that an article receives. A recent article in the Annals of Emergency Medicine describes how the Altmetric score is calculated, and the potential impact and limitations of this score.

Install the free Altmetric bookmarklet to get stats for an article you are reading online, or look for an Altmetric score when viewing articles on:

A journal’s website
JumboSearch: Copy and paste the title of an article into our library’s search tool, JumboSearch (http://tufts.summon.serialssolutions.com/). If an Altmetric score is available for the article, then you will see an icon below the abstract.
Scopus: Scopus is a database that indexes journal articles, conference proceedings and books from the sciences, social sciences, art and humanities. When viewing an article abstract in Scopus, look for the Metrics box in the right-hand column.

Impactstory: Impactstory (https://impactstory.org/) is a web-based tool that gathers metrics on research products (articles, data sets, etc.) from a variety of sources, including Facebook, Google+, Twitter and PubMed Central. Impactstory profiles display raw numbers as well as badges that indicate how a product has performed compared to similar products in the same discipline. Individuals with an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) can create an Impactstory profile for free.

So, what do these all this mean?

Altmetrics are an evolving area of use and study. Altmetrics provide a more nuanced picture of how articles are being used, and therefore compliment, not replace, traditional measures of research impact. For more on altmetrics, see ‘Research Impact: Altmetrics Make their Mark’ from Nature, and ‘Rise of “Altmetrics” Revives Questions about How to Measure Impact of Research’ from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

arts & culture, Library, May 2016, On the Shelf

From the Shelf…

May 16, 2016 Laura Pavlech

For work…

Electronic Resource: Sackler School Biomedical Sciences Resource Guide

Location: http://researchguides.library.tufts.edu/biomedical_research

The redesign of the library’s website eliminated pages dedicated to each school in favor of individual ‘guides’. You can access the Sackler School Biomedical Sciences Resource Guide either directly via the link above or by choosing ‘Biomedical Sciences’ from the Find drop-down menu on the HHSL homepage (http://hirshlibrary.tufts.edu/). This guide includes resources for finding journal articles, chemical and drug information, and protocols. The guide also links to other library guides of interest. I will be modifying this guide over the summer to ensure that it provides easy access to library resources. Please contact me (laura.pavlech@tufts.edu) with any questions or suggestions!

And leisure…

Letters to a Young Scientist, by Edward O. Wilson

Location: HHSL Book Stacks, Sackler, 5^th Floor, QH 31 W64 S4 2013

Pulitzer-Prize winning biologist and Harvard emeritus professor Edward O. Wilson shares advice and autobiographical anecdotes from his long career. The author of several books on entomology and conservation, as well as memoir, Wilson was name one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential Americans in 1995.

Library, May 2016, PubMed Tip of the Month

PubMed Tip of the Month: My Bibliography

May 16, 2016 Laura Pavlech

As I mentioned in my March post, the My Bibliography section of My NCBI allows you to save citations to your journal articles, book chapters, presentations, meeting abstracts, etc. This list of citations can be shared via a stable URL, exported to a text file, or saved as a PDF. NIH recommends using My Bibliography if you wish to include a link to a complete list of published works in your biosketch. My Bibliography is also used to demonstrate compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy on progress reports.

Access My Bibliography

Log in to your My NCBI account, find the My Bibliography box (note: you can drag and drop the boxes in My NCBI to change the order in which they appear) and click the ‘Manage My Bibliography’ link.

Add Citations

Once you are in My Bibliography, use the buttons in the right-hand column to add a citation from PubMed (preferred method), manually (use for articles not in PubMed, or other products, such as meeting abstracts, presentations or data sets), or from a file (must be in either MEDLINE or RIS format).

Citations can also be added to My Bibliography from any PubMed results page. Click the boxes next to the citations you wish to add, then choose My Bibliography from the Send to dropdown menu at the top of page.

Add citations from PubMed results page

Make Publicly Available

Click the ‘Edit settings’ link at the top of the My Bibliography homepage. This will bring you to a page where you can change your sharing settings from private to public. Once you do so, the URL will appear at the top of your My Bibliography homepage. Note: do not copy and paste the URL that appears in your browser when you are in My Bibliography because this is different than the unique URL generated for your collection.

Public URL and edit settings for My Bibliography

April 2016, Library, Notes from the library

Notes from the Library…Measuring Research Impact: Author Metrics

April 11, 2016 Laura Pavlech

At some point in your career, you will be asked to demonstrate the impact of your work. You may be asked to do this for a grant application, progress report or renewal, or on a CV for a job application, promotion, tenure or performance review. Traditionally, this has meant providing a list of publications you have authored, and perhaps the number of citations that those publications have received. Alternative methods of demonstrating research impact will be discussed in a later post.

How can I create a list of publications that I have authored?

You can do an author search in any bibliographic database, such as PubMed (see this month’s PubMed tip), Web of Science, or Scopus. It may be necessary to search more than one database to generate a complete list. Once you have run the search, you can save the results within the database (for example, send results to the My Bibliography section of My NCBI in PubMed) or export them to a citation manager.

Where can I find how many times my articles have been cited?

Several databases provide the number of times an article has been cited. Traditionally, Web of Science has been used to obtain citations counts; recently, Scopus and Google Scholar have emerged as alternatives to Web of Science. Each resource provides a different citation count because each indexes (or, in the case of Google Scholar searches) a different set of journals over a different period of time. Web of Science remains the best choice for authors with a long publishing history because Scopus indexes articles published from 1996 to the present (although older content is being added). Google Scholar is a moving target because it “generally reflects the state of the web as it is currently visible to our search robots and the majority of users” (https://scholar.google.com/intl/us/scholar/citations.html – citations). Regardless of the source that you choose, it is important to always cite that source.

How can I create a citation report in Web of Science or Scopus?

A Web of Science or Scopus citation report provides aggregate statistics for a set of search results. See the library’s ‘Measuring your Research Impact’ guide for step-by-step instructions on generating a citation report in Web of Science and Scopus.

What is the h-index?

You may have heard of, or noticed on your citation report, a metric called the h-index. The h-index is the number of papers (h) in a set of results that have received h or more citations. For example, an author with an h-index of 10 has 10 articles that have each received 10 or more citations. This metric is an attempt to measure both quantity (number of publications) and quality (number of citations). Therefore, it is considered a measure of the cumulative impact of an author’s work. For a recent discussion of the h-index and other measures of academic impact, see Anne-Wil Harzing’s ‘Reflections on the h-index’: http://www.harzing.com/publications/white-papers/reflections-on-the-h-index.

April 2016, arts & culture, Library, On the Shelf

On the Shelf…

April 11, 2016 Laura Pavlech

For work…

Electronic Resource: Essential Science Indicators

Location: Search for ‘Essential Science Indicators’ in Databases search box on the HHSL homepage (http://hirshlibrary.tufts.edu/).

This research analysis tool, integrated with Web of Science, provides performance statistics for authors, journals and articles for 22 subject fields. Essential Science Indicators can answer questions like: who are the most-cited authors in my field; what journals publish the top papers in my field; what is the average number of citations per article in my field; or what is the minimum number of citations that my article needs to receive to be in the 10% percentile in my field?

And leisure…

All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

Location: HHSL Leisure Reading, Sackler, 4^th Floor, Fiction D652

Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and numerous other awards, this book tells the parallel, and eventually intersecting, stories of a girl in France and a boy in the German army during World War II.

April 2016, Library, PubMed Tip of the Month

PubMed Tip of the Month: Author Search

April 11, 2016 Laura Pavlech

Go to the Advanced Search Builder by clicking the ‘Advanced’ link under the PubMed search box.

Choose Author from the All Fields drop-down menu (just Author, not Author – Last, Author – Full, or any of the other options). Enter the author’s last name, followed by 1 or 2 initials with no intervening punctuation (for example: Jones EA). If you are unsure about the inclusion of the second initial, then do not include it.

If the author has a common last name, then you probably want to narrow your search by including an affiliation. To do so, choose Affiliation from the All Fields drop-down menu below the boxes where you have entered the author’s name. Enter the name and/or location of the institution with which the author is associated. Affiliation can become complicated if the author has been (or is currently) associated with multiple institutions, or the name of the institution has several possible variations. If the author has an uncommon last name, then first try searching without an affiliation.

Check the results to ensure that they authored by the person in whom you are interested.

If you have searched for your own name, then you can send the results to the My Bibliography section of My NCBI by clicking ‘Send to:’ in the top right corner of the results page.

Author Search in PubMed Advanced Search Builder

Library, March 2016, Notes from the library

Notes From the Library…Citation Managers

March 9, 2016 Laura Pavlech

What is a citation manager?

At their most basic, citation managers are software programs that allow you to store and organize your references, and insert formatted citations and bibliographies into documents.

What citation managers are available?

There are several citation managers available; the library supports EndNote (and EndNote online), Mendeley, RefWorks and Zotero, which are all popular and well-established programs. Other available programs include Papers, Sente and Paperpile.

Which citation manager do you recommend?

It depends! While all citation managers have the same basic features, some citation managers are better for storing and annotating PDFs, working on multiple devices or computers, and collaborating with others. If I had to choose one, then I would recommend EndNote. This robust, widely-used citation manager has a bit of a steeper learning curve but several nice features such as automatically finding full text for references, annotating PDFs on your computer or mobile device, and thousands of citations styles. If you need help choosing a citation manager, then ask your colleagues what they are using, or ask me (laura.pavlech@tufts.edu).

How can I get a citation manager?

I will focus on the four programs that the library supports: EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks and Zotero. All of these programs works on both Macs and PCs. An EndNote app is available for iPads; a Mendeley app is available for both Android and iOS devices.

EndNote: Available for installation on Tufts-owned or personal computer for anyone with a primary affiliation of student, faculty or staff in the Tufts White Pages. Bring your laptop to the Tufts Technology Services desk on the 5^th floor of Sackler (Monday-Thursday 9AM-6 PM, Friday 9AM-7PM) or call 617-627-3376 for remote installation.

Mendeley: Freely available to anyone. Create account and download at: https://www.mendeley.com/.

RefWorks: Available to Tufts students, faculty and staff. Create account at: https://www.refworks.com/refworks2/default.aspx?r=authentication::init&groupcode=RWTuftsU

Zotero: Freely available to anyone. Create account and download at: https://www.zotero.org/

Library, March 2016, PubMed Tip of the Month

PubMed Tip of the Month: My NCBI

March 9, 2016 Laura Pavlech

My NCBI is a personalized account for PubMed and other National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases, such as Gene and Protein. This account allows you to:

Save searches and receive daily, weekly or monthly email alerts when new articles meeting your search criteria become available.

Save collections of references; in the My Bibliography section, you can save references to articles that you have authored. Collections, including My Bibliography, can be made publicly available, providing you with a URL to share with colleagues or use in grant applications.

Change preferences for how your results are displayed in PubMed, and select favorite filters.

Manage compliance with the NIH public access policy in the My Bibliography section.

Utilize Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae (SciENcv) to help you create biosketches for NIH and NSF grants.

To create an NCBI account:

Click the ‘Sign in to NCBI’ link in the top-right hand corner of any PubMed page (or, click here).

Click ‘Register for an NCBI account’ link, or sign in with a 3^rd party option, such as Google or eRA Commons (recommended for NIH-funded investigators who do not currently have an NCBI account). Note, you cannot user your Tufts username and password as a 3^rd party sign in option.

Library, March 2016, On the Shelf

On the Shelf…

March 9, 2016 Laura Pavlech

For work…

Career Options for Biomedical Scientists, edited by Kaaren Janssen & Richard Sever

Location: HHSL Book Stacks, Sackler, 5^th Floor, W21 J35 2015

This books begins with a brief introduction of why PhDs should consider careers beyond traditional academic positions and then delves into the alternatives, including teaching at an undergraduate or liberal arts institution, management consulting or science policy. Each chapter, authored by an individual working in the field, provides a description of the job options, required qualifications, and advice on applying and interviewing for positions in the field.

And leisure…

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs

Location: Tisch Tower Café, Tisch Library (Medford) 1^st Floor, or request through BLC WorldCat (http://tufts.worldcat.org/oclc/872653974)

Recipient of many accolades, this book tells the story of a man from East Orange, New Jersey who studied molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale, but never quite managed to move beyond the neighborhood of his youth, and ultimately met an untimely death. Written by his roommate at Yale, this book provides an intimate and thought-provoking portrait of a life.

February 2016, Library, On the Shelf

On the Shelf…

February 10, 2016 Laura Pavlech

For work…

Electronic Resource: Henry Stewart Talks – Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection

Location: Search for ‘Henry Stewart Talks’ in Databases search box on the HHSL homepage (http://hirshlibrary.tufts.edu/)

Video collection of seminar style lectures by leading scientists on the fundamentals and latest research in a variety of areas, including: cancer, cell biology, immunology and pharmacology. Separate subject area devoted to methods.

And leisure…

The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman

Location: HHSL Leisure Reading, Sackler, 4^th Floor (http://library.tufts.edu:80/record=b2798246~S1)

Novel based on the life of Rachel Pissarro, mother of the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro.