Ontario Library Association conference presentation: Altmetrics in Action: Documenting Cuts to Federal Government Science

As I mentioned last week, I did a presentation at the recent Ontario Library Association Super Conference using my work on Canadian science policy as a case study in altmetrics.

Here's the session description:

802F Altmetrics in Action: Documenting Cuts to Federal Government Science: An Altmetrics Case Study

The gold standard for measuring scholarly impact is journal article citations. In the online environment we can expand both the conception of scholarly output and how we measure their impact. Blog posts, downloads, page views, comments on blogs, Twitter or Reddit or Stumpleupon mentions, Facebook likes, Television, radio or newspaper interviews, online engagement from political leaders, speaking invitations: all are non-traditional measures of scholarly impact. This session will use a case study to explore the pros & cons of the new Altmetrics movement, taking a blog post documenting recent cuts in federal government science and analysing the various kinds of impact it has had beyond academia.

1. Understand what Altmetrics are
2. Understand what some pros and cons are of using Altmetrics to measure research impact
3. Ways that academic librarians can use altmetrics to engage their campus communities.

I have an altmetrics reading list that I've compiled for the presentation here.

Here are my slides:

Thanks to my friend and Queen's University colleague Nasser Saleh for stepping in at the end and convening my session. Overall it was a pretty good crowd and I thought the presentation went very well.