Alternative Metrics of Scientific Information Sphere

Abstract

The problems of evaluation of researcher’ or institution scientific work, the conventional (traditional) scientometric and bibliometric methods (quantitative indicators of publication activity and their citation) in terms of fast-moving tendencies of development of scientific information sphere are considered. The emphasis is on the practical invariability of scientific resource evaluation technologies, despite the emergence of new technologies for information sharing and communication. The main problem of the study was to find out the practical reasons for the leading scientometric companies long time ignoring the emergence of a new cohort of alternative metrics, which appeared in the waves of increasing the impact of rapid development of heterogeneous social networks on the system of scientific communications, and outlining the prospects of using new metrics. Together with traditional bibliometric indicators, additional application of alternative metrics based on measuring the level of attention to the results of scientific work (number of discussions, downloads, views) in social networks, author's blogs, forums, mentions in news programs, numerous repositories and universal bibliographic managers is offered. Such metric symbiosis will help to create a source base for independent scientific expertise, as a result of better evaluation of the research process. The article emphasizes that, unfortunately, the leading commercial scientometric companies do not rush to work closely with manufacturers who develop software for the calculation of altmetrics for different categories of users, until a unified approach to the set of elements on which these indicators are built would be elaborated.

Keywords

• alternative method of assessment, bibliometric, globalization, infosphere, scientist, scientometrics.