Implementing an altmetrics reporting service into DSpace using Altmetric.com

The IUScholarWorks Repository is a DSpace-based institutional repository for the dissemination and preservation of Indiana University's scholarly output. As in many institutional repositories, the statistics tracked for repository content have historically been concerned with a) the number and size of items held in our repository, and b) the page views and downloads for those item records (Wacha & Wisner, 2011). To date, these statistics have mostly been used for internal reference. With the rise of researcher awareness of alternative metrics (commonly called “altmetrics”) that track the usage and sharing of scholarly outputs on the social web (Priem, Taraborelli, Groth, & Neylon, 2010), the IUScholarWorks team has been interested in the idea of implementing altmetrics as a value-added service for depositors. We have partnered with Altmetric.com to test deployment of the service in two phases described below, with eventual roll-out to our production repository.