Jane Burns: Why and What to Measure? Understanding & Using Altmetrics to evaluate impact.

Jane joined RCSI in 2012 with over 20 years’ experience in Library & Research Environments in Ireland. Jane’s role as Research Officer is the management of pan-European Systematic review in the area of Communication Skills for Medical Students and providing research support for the HPEC team. Jane is also a Lecturer in the School of Information Studies at University College Dublin.

Her areas of expertise include Library & Information Management particularly in the area of Health Librarianship, Research Skills, and Development of Digital Resources, Online Narrative Tools, Meta Data Development, Taxonomy Development. Jane’s research interests include the harnessing of new technologies and new service models to enhance access to information and the development of online interactive learning environments  and Medical Humanities..

Jane is a Fellow of the Library Association of Ireland and is a member of its Executive Council where she serves on Continuous Professional Development Committee.

Twitter: @JMBurns99
LinkedIn: http://ie.linkedin.com/in/janeaburns/

Abstract

Jane has been appointed an Altmetric Ambassador by Altmetrics.com since 2015. As part of this program she has undergone extensive training and have developed a good understanding of the strength and limitations of these tools in understanding different types of impact for research. (https://www.altmetric.com)

A single research output may live online in multiple websites and can be talked about across dozens of different platforms. The use of Altmetrics provides for the collecting and collating all of this disparate information to provide users with a single visually engaging and informative view of the online activity surrounding scholarly content.

Defining what altmetrics are, how they work and how they can be integrated into the library role in the research and dissemination processes are central to this presentation. The link between traditional research and social media platforms will be explored to demonstrate the rapid, engaging and connected online environments for research.

A review of the benefits of joining the Altmetric Ambassador program as well as the training provided will be explored and steps on how to get involved will be explored.