The National Information Standards Organization NISO has been working under an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant to “explore, identify, and advance standards and/or best practices related to a new suite of potential metrics” in scholarly publishing. This work focuses on “new assessment metrics, which include usage-based metrics, social media references, and network behavioral analysis. In addition, this project will explore potential assessment criteria for non-traditional research outputs, such as data sets, visualizations, software, and other applications.”  Read more about the NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics (Altmetrics) Initiative.

If your university of library is involved in research data services, this draft provides guidelines at every level. It explains the relationship between an article CrossRef DOI, a dataset DataCite DOI, and the scholar responsible with an ORCID ID. NEW! Alternative Outputs in Scholarly Communications: Data Metrics – Draft for Public Comment May 13 – June 11, 2016

Our university has just become a member of ORCID. This draft will lead to discussion of the importance of machine readable persistent identifiers. NEW! Persistent Identifiers in Scholarly Communications – Draft for Public Comment May 13 – June 11, 2016

As universities and libraries have discussions about digital humanities, this draft provides lists of alternative scholarly output. NEW!  Alternative Outputs in Scholarly Communications – Draft for Public Comment May 13 – June 11, 2016

— Kimberly Hoffman