F1000 Partners With PLoS to Study Open Access Journal Metrics

"Faculty of 1000 (F1000), a publisher of services for life scientists and clinicians, joined forces with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit publisher and open access (OA) advocacy organization. F1000’s F1000Prime directory of biology and medicine journal articles is now accessible to PLoS researchers who need more information on the impact of their articles. According to terms of the agreement, the two publishers will work together to discover associations between F1000 recommendations and other impact measures. More than 3,000 PLoS journal articles now carry 'F1000Prime recommended' badges and are scored by F1000 scientists and clinicians for addition in PLoS’s article-level metrics (ALMs). ALMs recognize authors in the scientific community by using traditional citation data, article download numbers, science blog discussions, social media usage, and online bookmarking service usage to demonstrate the impact of the authors’ journal articles. PLoS ALMs received new classifications that are designed to separate scholarly metrics from social media discussions, since they are not always indicators of expert opinions. 'ALMs are becoming increasingly important for researchers and their funding agencies,' says Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, F1000 outreach director. 'F1000Prime recommendations are a well-established way of identifying important research in a way which merely looking at citations might miss. PLOS are leaders in ALMs and are an ideal partner to make innovative uses of F1000Prime data.'"