Today, it’s yours: the way to showcase your research online.
You’re proud of your research. You want people to read your papers, download your slide decks, and talk about your datasets. You want to learn when they do, and you want to make it easy for others to learn about it too, so everyone can understand your impact. We know, because as scientists, that’s how we feel, too.
The new Impactstory design is built around researchers. You and your research are at the center: you decide how you want to tell the story of your research impact.
What does that mean? Here’s a sampling of what’s new in today’s release:
A streamlined front page showcases Selected Publications and Key Metrics that you select and arrange from your full list of publications. There’s a spot for a bio so people learn about your research passion and approach.
Reading your research has become an easy and natural part of learning about your work: your publications are directly embedded on the site! Everyone can read as they browse your profile. We automatically embed all the free online versions we can find — uploading everything else only takes a few clicks.
None of this is any good if your publication list gets stale, so keeping your publication list current is easier than ever: zoom an email publications@impactstory.org whenever you publish something new with a link to the new publication, and poof: it’ll appear in your profile, just like that.
Want to learn things you didn’t know before? Your papers now include Twitter Impressions — the number of times your publication has been mentioned in someone’s twitter timeline. You may be surprised how much exposure your research has had…we’re discovering many articles reaching tens of thousands of potential readers.
We could talk about the dozens of other features in this release. But instead: go check out your new profile. Make it yours. We’re extending the free trial for all users for two more days — subscribe before your trial expires and it is just $45/year.
As of today, the three of us have taken down our old-fashioned academic websites. Impactstory is our online research home, and we’re glad it’ll be yours too.
The new ImpactStory profile confuses Twitter reach with discussion: one of my papers which has been tweeted twice is labelled as “highly discussed by the public” simply because it could potentially have reached >1400 people (the combined audiences of the two accounts who tweeted about it). Its actual reach is much smaller, as only a few of those 1400+ people actually read it in their timeline. I would rather have those numbers as “potential reach”. Frankly, considering them as a sign of “highly discussed by the public” makes me doubt the validity of ImpactStory 🙁 I am really sorry to sound so negative…..
Hi Pedro!
Your points about discussion vs readership vs reach and where the new Twitter impressions metric fits into that are really good ones. Maybe “Exposure” or “Reach” would be better classifications? In a way, this metric’s similar to newspaper coverage: just because a news outlet mentions a paper, doesn’t mean that everyone in its 125,000 circulation has read the article and learned about the paper. But we still take for granted that if you’ve appeared in that newspaper (or, say, Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter timeline) there’s a good chance your work has reached a wider audience.
It’s something for us to think on. We’ve heard from a handful of others who share those concerns, and may change what badge we assign to the Twitter impressions metric.
That said, I there’s no reason to doubt the validity of the other metrics we provide or even the validity of the Twitter impressions metric; the numbers are valid, it’s just in need of a better classification. We provide a diverse suite of metrics, with no focus on one single metric being supreme, for that very reason: if one metric doesn’t seem right to you, or isn’t useful to the way you understand your impacts, then you don’t have to use it.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!
All best,
Stacy
Hi Stacy and the rest of the team,
I had a similar reaction as Pedro to the huge Twitter impression numbers and in particular to their contribution to making a paper “Highly discussed”.
I trust that you will fix this mis-classification, but this mistake (as I see it) has actually put me off signing up for the paid profile. I am still seriously considering paying the 45/60$ to get this very nice overview of my research and to support your great effort, but I would have liked to have a bit more time to assess the accuracy of the profile and the value I get from it than just the very few days between the launch of the new profiles and the disappearing of them today.
This strange Twitter metric has made me unsure whether I can trust Impactstory enough to leave my altmetrics summary, professional CV and money in your hands.
I will probably go along anyway because altmetrics are great and the platform looks promising, but I would like to see this issue fixed and would also appreciate an extended period for signing up at a discount and before the profile goes black.
Hi Jonas,
Thanks for adding your thoughts!
While we can’t extend the trial period for you, we’re happy to offer a money-back guarantee on your subscription: http://feedback.impactstory.org/knowledgebase/articles/413428-money-back-guarantee
That is: Subscribe and, if you feel that Impactstory isn’t up to snuff, we’ll gladly refund your money.
All best,
Stacy