How Do Academic Librarians Use Research Impact Metrics? Guest post by Rachel Miles

I’m part of a research team that wanted to test whether claims about librarians’ love for altmetrics were actually true. Along with Sarah Sutton (Emporia State University, Kansas, USA) and Stacy Konkiel (Digital Science, Minnesota, USA), I helped survey US librarians to determine the actual awareness and usage of altmetrics among academic librarians in the USA. We also surveyed librarians about their awareness and use of other types of research impact indicators like citation counts, the Journal Impact Factor, and qualitative impact evidence. Our study (published recently in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication) was the first large-scale, national study of its kind.

Librarians previously on the tenure track were much less likely to use altmetrics in their tenure and promotion dossiers, than academic librarians currently on the tenure track

Some of the most interesting results from this study include:

-Academic librarians with regular scholarly communication duties are likelier to use research impact indicators, compared with other academic librarians; -There’s a growing interest among US academic librarians in using altmetrics as an indicator in promotion and tenure dossiers at institutions that offer tenure for librarians; and -Faculty tenure and promotion requirements tend to influence the likelihood of librarians addressing JIF and citation counts during consultations