ImpactViz – An OJS plugin for open scientometric information

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When searching for relevant scientific publications, it can be helpful to take a closer look at their impact. For this purpose, scientometric information is helpful, which can serve as an indicator for the way a publication is perceived by the scientific community. Is it cited by other scientific publications? Are there already mentions in the (social) media or elsewhere? The more heterogenous and open the data sources used for this purpose, the better.

To meet this challenge, the ROSI project (Reference Implementation for Open Sccientometric Indicators) has developed a tool that enables the visualization of open scientometric information. To meet the requirements of scientists, we interviewed them and in an iterative process developed a web application to collect and visualize information on the impact of a publication.

In order to extend the outreach of the tool and to allow easy handling, we developed a plugin for Open Journal Systems (OJS). OJS is a widely used open source application for the publication of scientific articles.

The plugin automatically extends the article page by visualizing the impact of the article. To do so, it searches in real-time for pre-defined scientometric data based on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The collected data is then displayed in an overview.

Screenshot of the article page with ImpactViz overview
Screenshot of the article page with ImpactViz overview

In order to increase comprehensibility, „impact“ is divided into four areas. By clicking on each concept, more detailed information on the concepts can be consulted. In „Scientific Impact“ the citation numbers are displayed. „Societal Impact“ focuses on the impact of the publication in a social context (e.g. with Twitter or Wikipedia mentions). „Scholarly Community Impact“ is intended to present indicators that give information about the impact on the scientific community, such as mentions of the publication in forums like Stackexchange. Under „Openness“ all information is collected that says something about the free availability of the publication (for example the license).

Screenshot of the detail view of one of the concepts
Screenshot of the detail view of one of the concepts

In order to allow a customization to the needs of the magazine, the selection of the displayed information can be adjusted in the plugin settings.

Plugin settings
Option to select the information displayed in the Plugin Settings

The presented plugin allows a practical reuse of the prototype developed in the project in a common system (soon available via the Plugin Gallery of OJS).

Integration into other systems is also possible: document servers, library catalogs and research information systems can benefit from this extension and give their users an additional value. Are you interested? Then simply follow the instructions to integrate ImpactViz into your application.