Our November Impactstory Advisor of the Month is Keita Bando!

Keita is one of Japan’s best-known Open Access and altmetrics advocates. As a co-founder of MyOpenArchive (a precursor to Figshare), Keita’s been at the vanguard of scholarly communication for much of his career.

We chatted with Keita this week to learn more about his current Mendeley2ORCID project, his advisory roles at other scholcomm startups like Figshare and Mendeley, and his vision for what part librarians can play in helping researchers navigate the ever-expanding world of scholarly communication.

Tell us a bit about your role at MyOpenArchive.

Back in 2007, on the assumption that “there must be a host of unnamed research papers around the world,” we started MyOpenArchive, a web repository where you can post and share your academic works.

Here’s an example of why we started MyOpenArchive: peer-reviewed papers in journals and cited sources are only “a handful of jewels,” so to speak. But these jewels could potentially be found anywhere in academia: graduate school papers, internal research, and so on. Before we started MyOpenArchive, tons of knowledge could not be found outside of institutions. So we created a place where you can post and share all knowledge: MyOpenArchive.

We advocated for open access locally in Japan in the first three years of MyOpenArchive’s life [1][2][3], and in the latter three years we advocated internationally. [4][5][6] These six years of advocacy made substantial impact on researchers who hope to be more open and cited. We closed MyOpenArchive in 2013. [7]

Since the closing of MyOpenArchive, my primary role is an Open Access advocate at large.

Why did you initially decide to join Impactstory?

I encountered altmetrics around 2010. As an Open Access advocate, I support Jason Priem et al’s “altmetrics: a manifesto” and I am convinced that we can use altmetrics to change the open access movement.

I marveled to find how Total-Impact (now ImpactStory) and the Mendeley API-powered ReaderMeter work as altmetrics tools.

It is Total-Impact (ImpactStory) that inspired me to take part in the vanguard of open access, and to be engaged also as a Mendeley Advisor.

Why did you decide to become an Advisor?

Because I was absorbed in altmetrics as a concept, as a tool, and a community of research, I devoted myself to posting some of the first research on altmetrics in Japanese. Also I talked at academic institutional programs, including an event for librarians, and took part in several other open access advocacy events. [8][9][10]

So becoming an Impactstory Advisor was a natural fit, given my interests and advocacy.

I also volunteer my time to support Mendeley, figshare and ORCID as an advisor or an ambassador.[11]

All of my many advisory roles essentially represent my immersion in academic communications around open access and altmetrics. It has been my visiting card at public meetings, to be able to say that “As an advisor I consider altmetrics as…” and so on.

What’s your favorite Impactstory feature?

Above all, I love the T-shirt for advisors! (Look at the picture, please!) 🙂

Sorry, just kidding! (But I love it!)

I found the API-enabled, third-party integration features amazingly helpful. For instance, figshare, GitHub, slideshare are well-integrated with Impactstory.

I am particularly interested in Impactstory’s ORCID integration. Recently I posted on my personal blog how I love how well Mendeley, ORCID and ImpactStory are integrated. I was amazed that a lot of researchers found the post useful, and we had a good discussion.[12]

“Two things you have to do when you publish your academic work,” I suggested. “1. Manage the works you published and 2. Manage the altmetrics”.

First, register your publication on Mendeley. Next, add it on ORCID. But don’t waste your time by doing both manually. (As a researcher, you don’t have enough time, right?) We created Mendeley2ORCID so you don’t have to do it manually.[13] The service allows users to sync “My publications” on Mendeley to “My Works” on ORCID.[14]

It takes few minutes to sync, then you can sync ORCID to ImpactStory. Once you sync that, you can see how your research works’ altmetrics work.

One important thing to mention: works you add should have a DOI (or ArXiv ID, PubMed ID, etc). If you don’t have one, you can get a DOI by adding it to Figshare. Using a DOI makes it easy to measure social media impacts and citations.

The Mendeley2ORCID syncer is one reason I enjoy taking part in these four advisory/ambassador programs.

You blog and tweet a lot about changes in publishing, digital preservation, and open science. In your expert opinion, what’s the single biggest challenge facing scholarly communication today?

In general, scholars don’t have enough time for scholarly communication–I mean, time to learn how you can integrate several tools around.

First, there are literature management services like Mendeley and Readcube. Next, there are document collaboration services like writelatex. Then, you’ve got altmetrics services like Altmetric and ImpactStory. Furthermore, you’ve got PeerJ and eLife as OA journals, figshare as a repository and also ORCID.

These scholarly communication tools need some kind of instructors. I suggest librarians and research administrators could be lead instructors. Scholars and research administrators could work together, joining forces to enter the emerging era of scholarly communication. Because a great deal of academic web services are born and fade all the time, it’s hard to keep track of how we can share our academic publications.

That is the long-term vision I hope to make happen. At least we could change how librarians help with scholarly communication tools.

ImpactStory is the key when you enter the emerging era of scholarly communication.

Thanks, Keita!

As a token of our appreciation for Keita’s outreach efforts, we’re sending him an Impactstory t-shirt of his choice from our Zazzle store.

Keita is just one part of a growing community of Impactstory Advisors. Want to join the ranks of some of the Web’s most cutting-edge researchers and librarians? Apply to be an Advisor today!