Researchers can now easily connect with their scholarly activities and contribution while also tracking the metrics from their work by using the combination of Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) and PlumX, from Plum Analytics, an EBSCO company. The integration of the two services allows all of the metrics from the public work associated with a particular ORCID identifier to be collected when the identifier is added to a PlumX profile.
ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique and persistent researcher identifiers. ORCID works with the community to embed these identifiers in research workflows and systems to connect researchers with their scholarly activities and contributions. It allows researchers to distinguish their research activities from those of others with similar names by creating a unique ORCID record.
Similarly, researchers can create PlumX profiles to track information on how their research output is being utilized, interacted with, and talked about around the world. The impact dashboard delivers a more complete picture of research and answers questions about research impact by gathering 'altmetrics' or 'alternative metrics' which are metrics around artifacts such as articles, clinical trials, blog posts, grants, books, theses/dissertations, webpages and more. The altmetrics are then categorized into Usage, Captures, Mentions, Social Media and Citations.
In the future, Plum Analytics will be working with ORCID to create PlumX profiles for every ORCID profile so when an institution becomes a PlumX customer, its researcher profiles that exist in ORCID will already be established. Plum Analytics is the only company synthesizing metrics data for custom analysis for each organisation and for publishers and presenting the metrics in a variety of ways including data visualizations, dashboards, and widgets.
