May 22, 2006
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University of Southampton (ECS) (04/17/06) Shadbolt, Nigel; Brody, Tim; Carr, Les
The future capabilities of the Open Access (OA) Research Web hinge on the prediction, measurement, tracking, navigation, assessment, and augmentation of research impact, which is the degree of a piece of research's usefulness to other researchers and users in nurturing additional research and applications. Research impact is measured according to the publication of the research paper, the level in the journal quality hierarchy of the journal that accepts the paper, the degree of the paper's usage, and the work's citation as a component of further published research. Citebase is a Google-like search engine that ranks articles and authors by citation impact, co-citation impact, or download impact through the use of citation links rather than arbitrary hyperlinks. Research impact, ranking articles, authors, or groups can be compared by citation and download counts, which can also be tapped to compare an individual's own research impact with itself over time. A team of Southampton University researchers has devised and will devise software that, combined with the expanding OA article database and the data that will be collected and analyzed with it, will spur more researchers to supply OA through self-archival; diagram OA growth across disciplines, nations, and languages; navigate OA literature via citation-linking and impact ranking; gauge, outline, and forecast the research impact of individuals, groups, institutions, disciplines, languages, and countries; assess the performance and productivity of research; evaluate research funding candidates; map the trajectory of earlier research lines according to individuals, institutions, publications, fields, and nations; study and anticipate the path current and future research will take; and offer educational resources that enable students to navigate through OA research literature in a manner that far transcends the Google approach to Web searches.
For the complete article, see http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12369
Posted by rab5 at 04:13 PM
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