In 2016 the LIS-Bibliometrics Forum commissioned the development of a set of bibliometric competencies (2017 Model), available at https://thebibliomagician.wordpress.com/2017-competencies-archived/. The work, sponsored by a small research grant from Elsevier Research Intelligence Division, was led by Dr. Andrew Cox at the University of Sheffield, and Dr. Sabrina Petersohn of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. The aim of the competency statements was to ensure that bibliometric practitioners were equipped to do their work responsibly and well.

The Competency Model was updated in July 2021 and includes a colour gradient to reflect the Levels and how they build upon one another. In particular, the 2021 competencies can help:

To identify skills gaps
To support progression through career stages for practitioners in the field of bibliometrics
To prepare job descriptions

The work underpinning the paper is available here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0961000617728111. It is intended that the competencies are a living document and will be reviewed over time.

Introduce graduate students and faculty in any discipline to the world of altmetrics and new ways to evaluate engagement with scholarly publications. The intention is to show not only new measurement techniques but to walk the learners through how to present their work in venues that will increase the visibility of their ideas and scholarly output.

Altmetrics are the descriptive data that can be used in addition to bibliometrics (e.g., CiteScore, Journal Impact Factor) that describe a work's impact. This 15-minute workshop gives 3 commonly used altmetrics, and how others can be found.

Slides from the Keynote talk given at Virginia Tech Open Access Week on 20 October 2020. See the full presentation recording and panel discussion at https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/100682.

Virginia Tech's Open Access Week 2020 keynote speaker, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd, Research Policy Manager (Publications) at Loughborough University in the UK, gives a talk about how what we reward through recruitment, promotion and tenure processes is not always what we actually value about research activity. The talk explores how we can pursue value-led evaluations - and how we can persuade senior leaders of their benefits.

The keynote talk is followed by a panel discussion with faculty members at Virginia Tech: Thomas Ewing (Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research and Professor of History), Carla Finkielstein (Associate Professor of Biological Sciences), Bikrum Gill (Assistant Professor of Political Science), and Sylvester Johnson (Professor and Director of the Center for Humanities. The panel is moderated by Tyler Walters (Dean, University Libraries).

The slides from this presentation are in Loughborough University's repository under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/presentation/Counting_what_counts_in_recruitment_promotion_and_tenure/13113860

Get an overview of journal-level bibliometrics such as Journal Impact Factor, CiteScore, Eigenfactor Score, and others. Find out how they are calculated and where they can be found! Recommended for faculty, graduate students, post-doctorates, or anyone interested in scholarly publications.

For a self-graded quiz and Certificate of Completion, go to https://bit.ly/scs-quiz1

More information about journal-level metrics: https://https://bit.ly/scs-impact-find

The programme aims to equip learners with the skills and knowledge required to engage in the use of a range of metrics around research impact and gain understanding of the research landscape. This is a flexible programme – you can do as much or as little as suits you. While some Things are interlinked, each of the Things is designed to be completed separately, in any order and at any level of complexity. Choose your own adventure!

There are three levels for each Thing:

Getting started is for you if you are just beginning to learn about each topic
Learn more is if you know a bit but want to know more
Challenge me is often more in-depth or assumes that you are familiar with at least the basics of each topic

Journal article abstract: With the help of academic search engine optimization (ASEO), publications can more easily be found in academic search engines and databases. Authors can improve the ranking of their publications by adjusting titles, keywords and abstracts. Carefully considered wording makes publications easier to find and, ideally, cited more often. This article is meant to support authors in making their scholarly publications more visible. It provides basic information on ranking mechanisms as well as tips and tricks on how to improve the findability of scholarly publications while also pointing out the limits of optimization. This article, authored by three scholarly communications librarians, draws on their experience of hosting journals, providing workshops for researchers and individual publication support, as well as on their investigations of the ranking algorithms of search engines and databases.

What does it mean to have meaningful metrics in today’s complex higher education landscape? With a foreword by Heather Piwowar and Jason Priem, this highly engaging and activity-laden book serves to introduce readers to the fast-paced world of research metrics from the unique perspective of academic librarians and LIS practitioners. Starting with the essential histories of bibliometrics and altmetrics, and continuing with in-depth descriptions of the core tools and emerging issues at stake in the future of both fields, Meaningful Metrics is a convenient all-in-one resource that is designed to be used by a range of readers, from those with little to no background on the subject to those looking to become movers and shakers in the current scholarly metrics movement. Authors Borchardt and Roemer, offer tips, tricks, and real-world examples illustrate how librarians can support the successful adoption of research metrics, whether in their institutions or across academia as a whole.

This UK report presents the findings and recommendations of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. The review was chaired by Professor James Wilsdon, supported by an independent and multidisciplinary group of experts in scientometrics, research funding, research policy, publishing, university management and administration. This review has gone beyond earlier studies to take a deeper look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. It has explored the use of metrics across different disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact. It has analysed their role in processes of research assessment, including the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It has considered the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems, and the growing power of league tables and rankings. And it has considered the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture. The report starts by tracing the history of metrics in research management and assessment, in the UK and internationally. It looks at the applicability of metrics within different research cultures, compares the peer review system with metric-based alternatives, and considers what balance might be struck between the two. It charts the development of research management systems within institutions, and examines the effects of the growing use of quantitative indicators on different aspects of research culture, including performance management, equality, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and the ‘gaming’ of assessment systems. The review looks at how different funders are using quantitative indicators, and considers their potential role in research and innovation policy. Finally, it examines the role that metrics played in REF2014, and outlines scenarios for their contribution to future exercises.

The Metrics Toolkit co-founders and editorial board developed the Metrics Toolkit to help scholars and evaluators understand and use citations, web metrics, and altmetrics responsibly in the evaluation of research.

The Metrics Toolkit provides evidence-based information about research metrics across disciplines, including how each metric is calculated, where you can find it, and how each should (and should not) be applied. You’ll also find examples of how to use metrics in grant applications, CV, and promotion packages.

This resource links to the full course (all 13 weeks of modules) on the Internet Archive. The video lectures for the courses are also available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maRP_Wvc4eY&list=PLWYwQdaelu4en5MZ0bbg-rSpcfb64O_rd

This series was designed and taught by Chris Belter, Ya-Ling Lu, and Candace Norton at the NIH Library. It was originally presented in weekly installments to NIH Library staff from January-May 2019 and adapted for web viewing later the same year.

The goal of the series is to provide free, on-demand training on how we do bibliometrics for research evaluation. Although demand for bibliometric indicators and analyses in research evaluation is growing, broadly available and easily accessible, training on how to provide those analyses is scarce. We have been providing bibliometric services for years, and we wanted to share our experience with others to facilitate the broader adoption of accurate and responsible bibliometric practice in research assessment. We hope this series acts as a springboard for others to get started with bibliometrics so that they feel more comfortable moving beyond this series on their own.

Navigating the Series
The training series consists of 13 individual courses, organized into 7 thematic areas. Links to each course in the series are provided on the left. Each course includes a training video with audio transcription, supplemental reading to reinforce the concepts introduced in the course, and optional practice exercises.

We recommend that the courses be viewed in the order in which they are listed. The courses are listed in the same order as the analyses that we typically perform to produce one of our standard reports. Many of the courses also build on concepts introduced in previous courses, and may be difficult to understand if viewed out of order. We also recommend that the series be taken over the course of 13 consecutive weeks, viewing one course per week. A lot is covered in these courses, so it is a good idea to take your time with them to make sure you understand each course before moving on to the next. We also recommend you try to complete the practice exercises that accompany many of the courses, because the best way to learn bibliometrics is by doing it.

This 25-min course, from the University of Glasgow looks at: the thinking behind a move towards narrative CV and assessment formats; how the research landscape and research assessment practices are evolving and efforts to develop fairer assessment approaches; advice and tips on what to include in a more narrative format; and examples from real narrative CVs, written by early-career researchers. This course is directed at early-career researchers, specifically those who are making use of the Resume for Researchers format (e.g., via the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which is a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom that directs research and innovation funding). Many funding agencies, the industry and corporate sector, and universities now require a more narrative-style CV to incorporate qualitative aspects into job applications (e.g. particularly in relation to describing input to publications, and the significance of these).

The goal of these formats is to help researchers to share their varied contributions to research in a consistent way and across a wide range of career paths and personal circumstances, and to move away from relying on narrowly focused performance indicators that can make it harder to assess, reward or nurture the full range of contributions that a researcher or academic makes to their field or discipline. This course helps researchers to structure, write, and craft a narrative CV to highlight and emphasize their individual academic accomplishments, contributions with a particular emphasis on 'how' they contributed rather than only 'what' they contribute.

The focus of this resource is primarily on the underrepresented area of publicly engaged scholarship. It addresses a wide range of MLIS students and LIS professionals based at universities, especially those whose mission explicitly encompasses engaged scholarship initiatives. The resource also spotlights publicly engaged publishing initiatives that provide examples of scholarly communications projects with social justice values such as equity, access, fairness, inclusivity, respect, ethics, and trust deeply embedded in their design. 

While examples shared in the first iteration of the resource will focus on model practices primarily in North America, the values-based nature of the resource will have global appeal. This resource describes the publishing challenges that publicly engaged scholars often encounter and offers a framework for tackling these challenges. Video interviews and insights are included to provide a range of viewpoints from scholars, advocates, and instructors.

This module dwells on a number of methods (including old and new) available for research evaluation. The module comprises the following four units:
Unit 1. Introduction to Research Evaluation Metrics and Related Indicators.
Unit 2. Innovations in Measuring Science and Scholarship: Analytical Tools and Indicators in Evaluation Scholarship Communications.
Unit 3. Article and Author Level Measurements, and
Unit 4. Online Citation and Reference Management Tools.
Brief overviews of the units are presented below.
Unit 1 encompassed and discussed citation analysis, use of citation-based indicators for research evaluation, common bibliometric indicators, classical bibliometric laws, author level indicators using authors' public profiles, article level metrics using altmetric tools. It is to be noted that author level indicators and article level metrics are new tools for research evaluation. Author level indicators encompasses h index, citations count, i10 index, g index, articles with citation, average citations per article, Eigenfactor score, impact points, and RG score. Article level metrics or altmetrics are based on Twitter, Facebook, Mendeley, CiteULike, and Delicious which have been discussed. All technical terms used in the Unit have been defined.
Unit 2 deals with analytical tools and indicators used in evaluating scholarly communications. The tools covered are The Web of Science, Scopus, Indian Citation Index (ICI), CiteSeerX, Google Scholar and Google Scholar Citations. Among these all the tools except Indian Citation Index (ICI) are international in scope. ICI is not very much known outside India. It is a powerful tool as far Indian scholarly literature is concerned. As Indian journals publish a sizable amount of foreign literature, the tool will be useful for foreign countries as well. The analytical products with journal performance metrics Journal Citation Reports (JCR®) has also been described. In the chapter titled New Platforms for Evaluating Scholarly Communications three websites i.e. SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) [ScimagoJR.com], eigenFACTOR.org, JournalMetrics.com and one software called Publish or Perish (POP) Software have been discussed.
Article and author level measurements have been discussed in Unit 3. Author and researcher identifiers are absolutely essential for searching databases in the WWW because a name like D Singh can harbour a number of names such as Dan Singh, Dhan Singh, Dhyan Singh, Darbara Singh, Daulat Singh, Durlabh Singh and more. The ResearcherID.com, launched by Thomson Reuters, is a web-based global registry of authors and researchers that individualises each and every name. Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is also a registry that uniquely identifies an author or researcher. Both have been discussed in this Unit. Article Level Metrics (Altmetrics) has been treated in this Unit with the discussion as to how altmetrics can be measured with Altmetric.com and ImpactStory.org. Altmetrics for Online Journals has also been touched. There are a number of academic social networks of which ResearchGate.net, Academia.edu, GetCited.org, etc. have been discussed. Regional journal networks with bibliometric indicators are also in existence. Two networks of this type such as SciELO – Scientific Electronic Library Online, and Redalyc have been dealt with.
The last unit (Unit 4) is on online citation and reference management tools. The tools discussed are Mendeley, CiteULike, Zotero, Google Scholar Library, and EndNote Basic. The features of all the management tools have been discussed with figures, tables, and text boxes.
This is Module Four of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Researchers.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232210E.pdf

These research metric source cards provide the citation for a scholarly work and the research metrics of that work, which can include: the Altmetric Attention Score, the scholarly citation counts from different data sources, and field-weighted citation indicators; in addition, abstracts and important context to some of the metrics is also included, e.g., citation statements, titles of select online mentions, such as news and blog article titles, Wikipedia pages, patent citations, and the context behind those online mentions. There are four printable source cards (front and back) followed by activity questions for each source card. These cards help students engage in and interrogate the meaning behind bibliometrics and altmetrics of specific scholarly works as well as evaluate the credibility, authority, and reliability of the scholarly work itself.

The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated. The declaration was developed in 2012 during the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco. It has become a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines and all key stakeholders including funders, publishers, professional societies, institutions, and researchers. The DORA initiative encourages all individuals and organizations who are interested in developing and promoting best practice in the assessment of scholarly research to sign DORA.

Other resources are available on their website, such as case studies of universities and national consortia that demonstrate key elements of institutional change to improve academic career success.

In ScholCom 202X, you'll take on the role of a new scholarly communication librarian at a small public university somewhere in the US in the "distant future" of the year 202X.

You'll be given a number of scenarios derived from activities and questions a real scholarly communication librarian might expect to receive. These scenarios fall into four general areas: copyright; publishing; institutional repositories; and open access.

The game has two versions, an interactive fiction format written in Ink (located in the "Ink source" and "playable" folders) and a static PDF version (in "printables").

In the interactive fiction version, after reading each scenario you'll be given a chance to consult your "augment," a smartphone-like device which contains a very brief annotated list of some relevant sources and a calendar that tracks how busy you are. In the PDF/print version, these sources are listed below the scenario text, and are open access whenever possible.

After you've read the scenario text and consulted these sources (or not), put yourself in the place of the librarian in the game and think about how you would respond. Would you try to help just the person you're currently talking to, or would you rather build resources and develop strategies that could make the question easier to answer the next time it comes up, and potentially even reach and educate people who don't know the questions to ask in the first place?

As you think through each scenario, ask yourself how you would balance the desire to do a good job against the threat of overwork. You're welcome to write out what you would do, or just think about it. The PDF versions of the scenarios can also be used to role play in a classroom setting, with one student taking on the role of the librarian and another the role of the person who needs their help.

Playable version at https://people.wou.edu/~bakersc/ScholCom202X/index.html. Additional background available at https://lisoer.wordpress.ncsu.edu/2021/05/18/new-to-the-scn-scholcom-202x-an-interactive-fiction-game/.

Book chapter from the book, "Teaching About Fake News: Lesson Plans for Different Disciplines and Audiences."

Abstract: In the digital age of information, undergraduate students often have a difficult time identifying and differentiating among online sources, such as news articles, blog posts, and academic articles. Students generally find these sources online and often struggle to vet them for consistency, context, quality, and validity. In this chapter, we present a new purpose for altmetrics in which librarians teach undergraduates to use altmetrics as a tool to evaluate and differentiate between online mainstream and scholarly sources, which can lead to a deeper understanding of the research process and the engagement and discussion surrounding research as well as an increased ability to evaluate sources more critically. On a more advanced level, students will be able to analyze different levels of inaccuracy and misrepresentation of research from mainstream sources and more accurately identify highly sensationalized research topics from mainstream sources, seminal works of research, and deliberately misleading information and/or fake news.

The OER, consisting of an Instructor’s Guide and accompanying presentation Slide Deck with speaking notes, emphasizes three primary themes:
- Principles and practices of community engagement for knowledge exchange;
- Meaningful access to research for non-academic audiences;
- Research ethics in historically marginalized underrepresented communities.

We have organized the OER to consist of a “core” module, “Community-based knowledge exchange and mitigating information privilege” and three pathways: 1) “Information access and alternative formats,” 2) “Supporting community led research,” and 3) “Community engagement and services.” Instructors can “mix and match” content from the pathways depending on available class time, course structure, and student interests. The core and pathway modules include learning objectives, a wide selection of open access academic and professional articles, books, blogs, websites, videos and multimedia, and active learning activities for in-person or online delivery.