Open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS) now includes article-level online usage data on all 7 of its scientific and medical journal articles (about 14,000 articles).
Look for the new data on the “Metrics” tab of every article.
With the latest expansion of the program initiated in March 2009, 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 HTML page views, PDF downloads and XML downloads, 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 program, 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.
For more information, visit PLoS’s project description, this blog by Mark Patterson, or this user-generated video tour by Dr. Alan Cann.