Skip to main content

Open Access Week to Explore Altmetrics

                                        Open Access Week                                   

by Grace Liddle, Whitney Hale

(Oct. 17, 2013) — The University of Kentucky Libraries will present several events in celebration of Open Access Week, Oct. 21-27. Now in its seventh year, the global event celebrates open access as an effective and efficient means of disseminating research and scholarship.

The first panel discussion “#Altmetrics: Demystifying the Link between Research Impact and Social Media,” will take place from 3-4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22, in the UK Athletics Auditorium in the William T. Young Library. This event is free and open to the public.

As social media is becoming a widely used avenue for communication, scholars are beginning to use it as a tool to share ideas and collaborate on research. Although these online interactions may contribute to research assessment, they are not accounted for by traditional impact metrics. To address this new scholarly communication landscape, some academics have asserted the importance of alternative metrics or altmetrics.

Three panelists will provide an overview of altmetrics, address the perceptions of altmetrics from the perspectives of an author and journal editor, and discuss metrics for research assessment and faculty evaluation at UK. The panelists are Sean Burns, assistant professor at UK School of Library and Information Science; Derek Lane, associate professor at UK Department of Communication and senior associate dean of Student Success and Administrative Affairs at the UK College of Communication and Information; Carl Mattacola, professor at UK College of Health Sciences and editor of the Journal of Sport Rehabilitation. There will be time for a Q and A between the panelists and the audience. A reception will follow the event. 

UK Libraries will also participate in a live online conversation with Peter Suber, director of the Office for Scholarly Communication and director of the Harvard Open Access Project at Harvard University. The conversation will be about the open access movement and scholarly communication issues. The event will take place from 2-3:15 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23, in the Alumni Gallery at Young Library. This event is free and open to the public.

For other events being held around the world to celebrate Open Access Week, please see UK Libraries' Open Access Research Guide. If you would like to discuss scholarly communication issues such as altmetrics, open access and author rights, feel free to contact Adrian Ho, director of digital scholarship, at 859-218-0895

For any questions or suggestions about Open Access Week, email UKnowledge@lsv.uky.edu.