Research Impact Metrics: Responsible Research Assessment

Assessment of researchers still rarely includes considerations related to trustworthiness, rigor, and transparency. We have developed the Hong Kong Principles (HKPs) as part of the 6th World Conference on Research Integrity with a specific focus on the need to drive research improvement through ensuring that researchers are explicitly recognized and rewarded for behaviors that strengthen research integrity. We present five principles: responsible research practices; transparent reporting; open science (open research); valuing a diversity of types of research; and recognizing all contributions to research and scholarly activity. For each principle, we provide a rationale for its inclusion and provide examples where these principles are already being adopted.

This guide opens with an introduction followed by an overview of Altmetric and the Altmetric Attention Score, Altmetrics and Responsible Research Assessment, Output Types Tracked by Altmetric, and the Altmetric Sources of Attention, which include: News and Mainstream Media, Social Media (X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, and historical data from Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Sina Weibo); Patents, Peer Review, Syllabi (historical data only), Multimedia, Public Policy Documents, Wikipedia, Research Highlights, Reference Managers, and Blogs; finally, there is a conclusion, a list of related resources and readings, two appendices, and references. This guide is intended for use by librarians, practitioners, funders, and other users of Altmetric data or those who are interested in incorporating altmetrics into their bibliometric practice and/or research analytics. It can also help researchers who are going up for annual evaluations and promotion and tenure reviews, who can use the data in informed and practical applications. It can also be a useful reference guide for research managers and university administrators who want to understand the broader online engagement with research publications beyond traditional scholarly citations, also known as bibliometrics, but who also want to avoid misusing, misinterpreting, or abusing Altmetric data when making decisions, creating policies, and evaluating faculty members and researchers at their institutions.

It is a practical step-by-step process designed to help research managers, or anyone involved in conducting research evaluations, in planning new evaluations as well as check existing evaluations. SCOPE is an acronym, where S stands for START with what you value, C for CONTEXT considerations, O for OPTIONS for evaluating, P for PROBE deeply, and E for EVALUATE your evaluation.

The course program consists of three courses targeted at professional users of scientometrics, including librarians, policy officers, and research managers at universities, funding agencies, and other research organizations. For PhD students CWTS offers the annual CWTS Scientometrics Summer School.

Welcoming all research adminstrators from emerging research institutions, including Historically Black Colleges & Universities, Tribal Colleges & Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and any other research-active institution including R1.

Join us for the 7th BRIC conference and our first hosted in Western Canada. The event starts with a one day pre-conference followed by a single track 2 day main event, bringing together librarians, information professionals, expert searchers, and bibliometricians.

Our in-person event highlights innovative exploration of citations and impact analysis but we also present compelling research on discovery and expert search.