This challenge in one video:

About Metrics in Context

A one-paragraph explanation:

Scholarly metrics (e.g., citations and altmetrics) are not only used in research assessment but also increasingly power discovery services and other scholarly applications. However, we rarely ask the question where that data comes from and how it was created. A question that matters as citation data is not simply citation data. Citation data from the Web of Science covers different disciplines, different types of articles, and uses different extraction methods than for instance Google Scholar. Metrics in Context is a Frictionless Data Tool Fund project aiming to create a Citation Data Package that resolves this problem by providing both citation data as well as provenance information in one data structure.

A one-page explanation:

The README on the Github repo.

What are Citation Context Reports?

For the Frictionless Hackathon, I propose to build a prototype of a citation context report for Citation Data Packages using Livemark. These reports would provide insights about the data at hand which go beyond the usual performance assessments, impact indicators, or metrics of excellence by making use of the very built-in provenance information.

Just a few hypothetical scenarios in which citation context reports could be useful:

"Hm... that's a lot of data that I've collected from all these super cool APIs and datasets that are all open. FAIR data FTW! I should probably look into their citation context reports to figure out which of these indicators I can combine and use to compare groups of researchers. Or I could just mash them all together and make it super colorful and everybody gets a fancy number they are reduced to!"

"Oh dang! Those citation counts are so impressive... and they started a year after me? *imposter syndrome intensifies* Ok, breath, let's check if the indexed articles are representative of the disciplines I engage with using citation context reports! Either I will feel better and simply stop the never-ending comparing and competing or be crushed by the tyranny of metrics in a neoliberal academy."

"Wait, what? Did they seriously just discontinue this service that powers and enables massive parts of the scholarly ecosystem because some shareholder dude wanted more money? Damn, I guess we should have started to invest in community infrastructure earlier... Anyway, for now I'll go and see if there any other data sources with a similar citation index profile that could meet my needs."

Goals

There are three goals (and possible areas to contribute) for the hackathon challenge which are also tracked in their respective GitHub issues.

1. Create a prototype for citation context reports (issue #28)

2. Develop and prototype use cases for Citation Context Reports (issue #29)

3. Kickstart the Citation Index Index (issue #30)

Contributing

I am on the west coast of Canada and unfortunately going to miss most of the time to work synchronously but luckily I also happen to be totally overwhelmed with the other to-dos and tasks in my life. Therefore, we shall dispose of common conceptions of organization, synchronicity, and progress and thrive in the beautiful mess of multiple time zones, living documents, interrupting calls and roommates, and life in general.

What I am trying to say: Things are messy, apologies, but please feel free and encouraged to jump in and join anywhere. The three issues linked above might be good spots to begin.