1. Developing approaches to research impact assessment and evaluation: lessons from a Canadian health research funder
Assessing research impact is complex and challenging, but essential for understanding the link between research funding investments and outcomes both within and beyond academia. In her post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, Julia Langton provides an overview of how a Canadian health research funder approaches impact assessment; urging caution in the use of quantitative data, highlighting the importance of organisation-wide capacity-building, and outlining the value of a community of practice.
The blog post says (quote): There are dozens of conceptual frameworks and approaches to research impact assessment across the globe, which can be intimidating for someone new to the field. But for the most part, frameworks are more similar than they are different in their quest to understand research impact. In Canada, they have a thriving community of practice – made up of provincial and national health funders and research organisations – that has come together to move the research impact agenda forward. By adapting the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) framework for impact assessment to local environments, they benefit from a common language for evaluating and communicating the impact of investments in health research. The CAHS framework uses five impact categories – advancing knowledge, capacity-building, informing decision-making, health impacts, and socioeconomic impacts – and provides a menu of nearly 70 indicators that map onto these domains………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Enhance EBSCO eBook Discovery: How EBSCO's New Rapid MARC Delivery Service Expedites E-book Access
EBSCO recently announced a new service which will deliver EBSCO eBook MARC records to customers directly after purchase. A post in the EBSCOpost Blog discusses about this new offering, and how it will improve workflows for librarians and provide speedy eBook access to end users.
The blog post says (quote): EBSCOhost Collection Manager (ECM) customers have complete control of their MARC record settings. At any time, an ECM customer can opt in to receive EBSCO eBook MARC records, change their formatting and encoding, and specify who to notify at their institution when new MARCs are available. Additionally, ECM users will have access to their MARC records in a new MARC record interface; delivered records remain available for download for 90 days in ECM, and individual records or orders can be regenerated at any time using ECM's custom MARC request feature. Any individual whose email address is provided for MARC notifications will receive an email when any new MARCS are available, with a download link embedded in the email for easy retrieval………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Finding the most relevant research has just gotten a lot easier
Altmetric recently introduced two new search features to the Altmetric Explorer. In her post in the Altmetric Blog, Inez van Korlaar talks about how they allow users to search by subject area and author affiliation.
The blog post says (quote): Researchers and other institutional users are now able to use the Altmetric Explorer in ways that were never possible before. For instance, "horizon scanning" by subject area allows them to keep up-to-date with interesting research from specific subject areas within their organistion and beyond. At the same time, the new affiliations data can help researchers to identify potential collaborators who are active in specific subject areas. For research administrators, it has now become a lot easier to make altmetric comparisons between own and other institutions. Previously, it was already possible to see the altmetrics associated with outputs produced by own institution via a data implementation in Altmetric Explorer for Institutions. But now, it's much easier to also see and compare the data with the altmetrics for outputs produced by other institutions………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Will Publishers Syndicate Their Content?
The scholarly publishing sector has struggled to address the problems that users face in their discovery-to-access workflow and thereby stave off skyrocketing piracy. Roger C. Schonfeld, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, discusses whether scholarly publishers are prepared to radically improve content distribution and syndicate their content to all manner of access platforms.
The blog post says (quote): Elsevier as a publisher surely benefits from having its content distributed more broadly and therefore access and usage expanded. But Elsevier increasingly sees itself as "a global information analytics business." To fulfill this role, Elsevier as a platform company will surely hope to gain access to far more usage data through Mendeley, Scopus, SSRN, and bepress, than it loses to third party platforms. Put another way: if ResearchGate originates as much traffic as it appears to do, would Elsevier lose access to substantially more usage data from SES syndication than it stands to gain? And if so, does this threaten in any way its interests in becoming an analytics provider? The company's strategists are surely grappling with these tradeoffs………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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