Article-level Metrics at PLoS (an alternate way to evaluate impact): A talk by Dr. Peter Binfield on November 9 at UC Berkeley

The Impact Factor of a journal (a measure of the number of citations to an entire journal) is commonly used by scientists and administrators as one indicator of the quality of individual articles within that journal. With the advent of the internet it is now possible to measure the worth of an individual article via so-called 'article-level metrics' (metrics which include citations, usage, bookmarks, blog coverage, and post publication commentary for a single article), and in this respect PLoS leads the world providing the data to allow this analysis.

Dr. Peter Binfield is Managing Editor of PLoS ONE (an open access title; the third largest journal in the world; and the recent winner of a prestigious award for 'publishing innovation').

For more information, see the PLoS website on article-level metrics http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/