Jason Priem asked me to give a keynote at the altmetrics12 workshop at Northwestern on 21 June. Unfortunately, the timing of #altmetrics12 isn’t very convenient. I was supposed to be on a plane on my way to #ALA12 in Anaheim. But, I think metrics are important and have written about what SSRN is doing in this space.

I have been anxious this week because I need to submit an abstract by 18 May. There are a lot of interesting things happening in metrics and I’m not sure what I’ll talk about. At first, I thought I would discuss the importance of being succinct and not using tools just because you can (e.g, Prezi vs Powerpoint) but that doesn’t seem very exciting. And the stuff happening in altmetrics is pretty exciting.

A few days ago I was interviewed at the American Anthropological Association and I said, referring to grey literature, that Grey is the New Black. I explained how my publisher friends used to ask me why anyone would want grey literature or if I thought there really was any value in it. Heck, it wasn’t peer reviewed, printed and distributed … several months to years after it had been written. I see altmetrics as being a lot like working papers 20 years ago. Maybe we should call them grey metrics …

It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but I know what I’m going to talk about

I’m at the  SPARC 2012 Open Access Meeting (#sparc2012) in Kansas City this week where John Willbanks (Kauffman Foundation, Creative Commons) is the keynote along with many others -  discussing how to expand the dissemination of scholarly research and open access.

Later this month, I’ll present at the UKSG Annual Conference (#uksglive) in Glasgow. In it’s 35th year, the conference will aim to “connect the information community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication”.

The conference will be held at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and the UKSG promises “Big thinking + practical learning = unmissable programme”. I’m looking forward to interacting with publishers. Between #OA in KC and publishers in Scotland, it will be an interesting month.

If you find yourself in Glasgow later this month and would like to connect, please  contact me. If you do not find yourself in Glasgow but are interested in the discussion, all presentations will be uploaded here during the conference.

There are a lot of people changing the world of scholarly communications and I’m looking forward to the 2011 JISC Geospatial Innovation Meeting (Joint Information Systems Committee) at Ravensborough College and Online Information 2011 at the Olympia Exhibition Center. Both of these meetings will highlight important new ways to use data and other tools to create innovative research.

Gregg Gordon is available to connect during either conference,  send us a message.

Open Access Week, now entering its fifth year, is just around the corner. It is a global event which promotes the benefits of open access publishing via free, immediate and online access of scholarly research (#OAW2011).

I will be celebrating the week by speaking at MIT on 10/26. I will discuss how scholarly communications has changed in recent years and the need for article level metrics to help identify what we don’t know, we don’t know.

My presentation, The Scholarly Communication Collider, will also explore how bringing together the right content, in the right place at the right time, helps create scholarly research.

Members of the MIT community are welcome to attend, Wednesday, October 26 from 11:30-12:30 in 3-270.

I’m looking forward to delivering the keynote, Searching and Accessing the Right Content, in the Right Place at the Right Time, tonight at the Searle Center’s Second Annual Conference on Internet Search and Innovation at Northwestern Law School.  The Searle Center runs several conferences each year related to the impact of laws and regulations on economic growth.  Professor Daniel F. Spulber, Research Director of the Searle Center, has put together an impressive group of presenters (PDF Agenda) that I’m looking to forward to hearing.

If you’re at the Conference or around Northwestern today or tomorrow, please stop by to say hello.

I’m speaking at the ORCID (Open Research and Contributor ID) Meeting at Harvard on May 18th. ORCID is a global initiative tackling the author name ambiguity issue, with over 200 participating organizations including academic institutions, publishers, societies, corporate, non-profit and government organizations.

Author names create a lot problems for repositories like SSRN. We often find errors and inconsistencies with common, hyphenated, and non-English names, especially those with foreign characters. The problem grows exponentially when you accept submissions from a variety of sources, each with their own quality criteria.  It is no longer accurate or reliable to depend on first name/last cataloging. Even before the dawn of the digital age, scholarly research and publishing struggled with this challenge and now, it has become an issue that needs to be resolved.

ORCID is a community of minds working to create a central registry/ID, where each author/contributor would have their own unique ID.

“Accurate identification of researchers and their work is one of the pillars for the transition from science to e-Science, wherein scholarly publications can be mined to spot links and ideas hidden in the ever-growing volume of scholarly literature.”

A well written article released in WIRED explained that an ORCID ID would accumulate credit beyond published papers. For example, speaking, data, public outreach and blogging would be attributed to a single source or individual, basically “…anything that helps science but currently goes unrewarded.”

Beyond The Book recently interviewed Amy Brand, a member of the ORCID Initiative’s Board of Directors (and Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments at Harvard University). Amy provides a thorough overview of ORCID’s principles, vision and explains how it would improve efficiencies for all.

I’ll be discussing SSRN’s view on researcher ID systems – how a paper submitted by an author, their academic institution, a co-author or another publisher could be linked across all digital platforms. The real benefit of ORCID is that we will easily be able to connect the dots and allow readers to see author’s full body of work, the big picture … all in one picture.

I am looking forward to speaking on Saturday at this year’s Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) Conference and Annual Meeting, in New York this weekend (4/29-5/1). It will be a great opportunity to talk with several business schools and discuss the scholarly continuum, current research trends and the future (and beyond) of scholarly publishing.

Our Panel Description:

The Impact of Research How our businesses, governments and other institutions are managed, influences our world. If our research institutions produce useful, relevant, readable and rigorous research then they can influence management practice. There is a clear and persistent need for business school research and teaching to meet the needs of business and society better. This presentation looks at the factors and challenges which create impact of research in business and management, and the factors which can mitigate against impact. The session aims to both challenge the audience, and to provide some useful guidelines for those seeking to create and disseminate research with impact.

Speakers:
Gregg Gordon, President & CEO, SSRN
John Peters, President, GSE Research Limited
Howard Thomas, Dean and LKCSB Chair in Strategic Management, Singapore Management University

Date: Saturday, April 30, 2011
Time: 10:30am to 12pm

I will be discussing what we are seeing at SSRN,including the importance of article level metrics and am available during the conference to meet – to connect,  send me a message.

I’m in Kansas City today looking forward to attending the Kauffman Foundation’s Economic Bloggers Forum. I met some great thinkers and friends at the inaugural conference in ’09 and I am sure this year will only be more of the same.

Stream the presentations live today (Friday, April 1 2011) from 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (CST)

The Kauffman foundation explains:

The Forum brings together select economics, finance, and technology bloggers for an event in Kansas City to discuss key policy issues and cutting-edge research on topics related to entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth. It will feature a dozen talks by well-known bloggers, including Tyler Cower, Virginia Postrel, Felix Salmon, and Dean Baker.

PIRUS2 (Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics) is a cooperative project involving publishers and repositories determined to develop standards and processes that will enable open usage statistics.

I will be presenting about SSRN’s view on article level metrics at the PIRUS2 seminar this week in London. I am also looking forward to learning about the projects current status thus far and next steps.

The project plan is available on their website, with more information here.

The full report of the original PIRUS project may be found at: http://tinyurl.com/PIRUSreport1

I will be a Key Guest and deliver the inaugural address later this week at the International Conference on Business Research (ICBR) at the SRM University in Tami Nadu, India.  The event is being organized by SRM’s School of Management where folks will be sharing discussions on emerging research in business management with an international focus.

India is currently SSRN’s sixth largest user community.  I’m very much looking forward to a diverse audience, interesting discussions, and learning how we can make SSRN more valuable to international researchers.

UPDATE: ICBR was spectacular and my hosts were wonderful.  I look forward to working together on an Indian Research Network that was announced at the conference.