Bibliometrics for Librarians

Thursday, 7/9/2020 - Thursday, 7/30/2020
  • 2:00 PM-3:00 PM (Eastern)
  • 1:00 PM-2:00 PM (Central)
  • 12:00 PM-1:00 PM (Mountain)
  • 11:00 AM-12:00 PM (Pacific)

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This 4-week course will introduce students to tools and concepts for bibliometric analysis. This will begin with an introduction to bibliometric analysis, including a brief history and overview of bibliometrics; a review of bibliometric indicators and general discussion of the mathematics behind them; and direct applications for librarians. Students in this hands-on course will work directly with bibliometric data, including gathering and wrangling data using various packages in R. The course will conclude with a project bringing together these lessons. Participants will gather a body of references, calculate citation metrics, and develop visualizations based on bibliographic metadata and citation connections.

The instructors, Phillip Doehle and Clarke Iakovakis will use Jupyter Notebooks and Binder repositories that will include instructions and code snippets for students to use for their assignments and notes before, during, and after class sessions. All course materials will be available at https://pdoehle.github.io/bibliometrics-for-librarians/. Students will use the Crossref API and the OpenCitations Corpus API for data sources via the R packages citecorp and rcrossref developed by rOpenSci . The instructors will also provide test datasets for use in exercises.

The instructors will provide recorded demos for students to review. They will also hold weekly live question and answer sessions for students to ask questions and test their understanding. The instructors will also provide a platform to support asynchronous exchange, as students will be encouraged to do exercises and practice on their own.

This is a blended format web course:

Throughout the course, you will have the chance to participate in 4 separate live webinar lectures, one per week. The live events will take place on Thursday, July 9, Thursday, July 16, Thursday, July 23 and Thursday, July 30 at 1:00 pm Central time. The webinars will be recorded and distributed through the web course platform for asynchronous participation for those who cannot attend the live events. The web course space will also contain the exercises and discussions for the course.

Learning Outcomes

Learning objectives for this program include:
  • Understand basics of bibliometric methodology, bibliometric indicators, and sources for bibliographic metadata and citation data for use in bibliometric analysis.
  • Use R packages rcrossref and citecorp to access citation metadata from the Open Citations Corpus.
  • Complete a bibliometrics analysis project.

Course Outline

Session 1 - Introduction to Bibliometric Methodologies & Indicators

  • Bibliometric History & Context
  • Uses and Misuses of Bibliometrics
  • Goals & Applications of this Course

Session 2 - Bibliometric Data Sources

  • The Bibliometrics Data Landscape
  • OpenCitations Corpus
  • A Brief Introduction to R
  • Gathering data with rcrossref and citecorp

Session 3 - Doing Bibliometrics Part 1

  • Centrality, Connectedness, & Clustering
  • h-index, Impact Factor, and Eigenfactor
  • Project Overview: Analyzing Article Influence

Session 4 - Doing Bibliometrics Part 2:

  • Project Discussion & Recap
  • Next steps

Who Should Attend

Librarians working in metadata, scholarly communications, systematic reviews, and reference & instruction who are seeking to improve their understanding of technologies for gathering bibliographic metadata and analyzing citations.

Presenters

Phillip Doehle 

Picture of Phillip Doehle

Phillip Doehle is the Digital Services Librarian at Oklahoma State University (OSU). He has organized OSU’s Software/Data Carpentry workshops since 2017 and taught at the workshops since 2016. The program has introduced over 400 researchers to introductory data-science techniques over the past five years. Before taking his position with the library, he was the Program Coordinator at the OSU High-Performance Computing Center where he organized education and outreach events for the center. Phillip has a Master’s in Applied Mathematics from OSU.

Clarke Iakovakis

Photo of Clark Iakovakis

Clarke Iakovakis is the Scholarly Services Librarian at Oklahoma State University. He has an MS in Information Studies from the University of Texas. He has worked in libraries for over 10 years in a variety of capacities. He is interested in scholarly publishing, open access, copyright, and bibliometric analysis. He is a certified Carpentries instructor and has taught programming in a variety of settings, including a full course on “Working with Scholarly Literature in R” at the Force Scholarly Communications Institute (see https://ciakovx.github.io/fsci_syllabus.html).

Registration

Cost

  • LITA Member: $135
  • ALA Member: $195
  • Non-member: $260

Zoom login information will be sent to registrants just prior to the start date.

 

How to Register

Register Online  page arranged by session date (login required)

OR

Mail or fax form to ALA Registration

OR call 1-800-545-2433

OR email registration@ala.org

Can't attend the live event? No problem! Register and you'll receive a link to the recording.

 

Tech Requirements

Live, synchronous lectures require attendee participation via internet audio. Attendees will need a high-speed internet connection (preferably wired) and a headset or speakers. We recommend attendees use headsets connected to their computers during webinars.All attendees are muted but can use the built-in chat function to communicate with presenters. The use of computer speakers with a microphone is not recommended, as this can cause echoes.The recommended browser is Mozilla Firefox, although other current browsers should also work.

Please contact us at lita@ala.org at least 10 days in advance if you require an accommodation.

Contact

For questions about registration, contact ALA Registration:  call 1-800-545-2433, or email registration@ala.org.

For all other questions or comments related to the course, contact LITA.