We are pleased to announce that PlumX Metrics — including citations, media mentions, tweets and more — are now integrated into all Digital Commons dashboards. Administrators, authors, journal editors and others now have easy and efficient access to a greater variety of metrics to build powerful pictures of usage and impact.
Here are some tips from our beta testers to using your new dashboards.
Improve reporting for your stakeholders:
You need to be able to demonstrate the value of the investment in a repository program to your stakeholders; the integration of PlumX Metrics will help you tell your story in an even more compelling way. You can now:
“… having more detailed access to news media and citations is really important. I like to tell a story in my annual report, and numbers are good but they don’t include the human impact element that really demonstrates the difference that your repository is making in the world.”
— Karen Bjork, Head of Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Publishing, Portland State University
Support faculty evaluation exercises:
Researchers, whether early in their careers or firmly established in the field, need to present as much evidence as possible that the impact of their scholarship extends beyond their field into the global community. You can now help them:
“When they’re [faculty] going through tenure or promotion review, altmetrics is a great way to supplement citation counts, especially if they published recently.”
— Ashley Sergiadis, Digital Scholarship Librarian and Assistant Professor, East Tennessee State University
Capture the impact of non-traditional scholarship:
An increase in the amount and types of scholarship that fall outside the traditional scholarly publishing models necessitates new ways of measuring impact beyond the citation. The addition of PlumX Metrics helps repository administrators:
“[Faculty] need to demonstrate how impactful their work is … Faculty are doing interesting, cool things and altmetrics are a good way to show impact of non-traditional work. [There is] lots of buy-in coming as a result of this.”
— Sarah Norris, Scholarly Communication Librarian, University of Central Florida
Drive critical insights and journal strategies for editors:
Journal editors are constantly making decisions that affect the health and reach of their publications. Access to a broader set of data around what’s doing well, what’s trending, what’s driving the most interest and engagement helps them make more informed editorial decisions. Journal editors can now:
“Access to citation counts are very much helpful for me because our journal is working on getting an impact factor … these metrics will provide more insight into which articles are more impactful and how we are doing overall.”
— Editor, Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews
To easily access the new metrics, simply log in to your dashboard and click on the Plum icon in the sidebar.
Want more information? See the documentation here.
How will you use your newfound reporting superpowers to better show — and tell — your institution’s impact story? Please keep in touch via your consultant or write to us at dc-support@bepress.com. You can also share your successes on Twitter so we can share it forward. Be sure to include our handle, @bepress_DC.
If you came across this blog and think that Digital Commons might be the right solution for your institution’s needs, please contact us here.
