PLOS article metrics

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Very good overview by Phil Davis of the new PLOS article-level 
metrics program.  Here is the link:

http://j.mp/2kAhaS

The comments on Davis's post are good, too.

One thing that Davis does not mention is that this too shall 
pass.  The article-level metrics are a function of user activity, 
which is itself highly susceptible to the machinery of 
search-engine marketing and search-engine optimization (SEO is a 
subset of SEM).

As authors and publishers become more aware of the value in 
driving up usage statistics, they will engage in more and more 
SEM and often SEO.  Thus the competition for the 'best' article 
becomes entangled with the efforts of aggressive marketing. 
Authors and publishers who are less skilled at this will be left 
behind; the more skillful will invest greater and greater 
resources in SEM, driving up costs.  This is just one of the many 
reasons that open access publishing is inherently more expensive 
than the toll-access form.  But as Stevan Harnad likes to point 
out, it's not about the money.

I wrote about this in 2004 in 'The Devil You Don't Know' 
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1163/1083.

Joe Esposito