Open access (OA) publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS) has announced the release of an expanded set of article-level metrics on its scientific and medical journal articles (about 14,000 articles across seven titles). The article-level metrics programme was launched in March 2009, and with the latest addition of online usage data, PLoS seeks to transparently provide a set of information on every published article. Such information is expected to be of value to researchers, readers, funders, administrators and anyone interested in the evaluation of scientific research.
The PLoS article metrics include the new online usage data (HTML page views, PDF downloads and XML downloads) that are compliant with the industry standard, COUNTER 3.0 http://www.projectcounter.org/code_practice.html. Also included are citation counts, comments, ratings, social bookmarks and blog coverage. Usage data will be updated daily and currently include more than four years of statistics from all seven peer-reviewed PLoS journals. With this growing and detailed set of metrics on every article, PLoS aims to demonstrate that individual articles can be judged on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal in which they are published. In order to place the new usage data in context, PLoS is providing summary tables to allow users to see how an article compares with various average measures.
PLoS is still in the early stages of the article-level metrics programme, but claims that this is the first attempt by a major publisher to place such a broad range of data on each article. It hopes that the provision of these data will encourage other publishers to make such data available, which will lead ultimately to broader improvements in scholarly communication and research assessment.
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