Public Library of Science releases online usage data

The metrics programme was launched in March 2009, and with the latest addition (14,000 articles across seven titles) of online usage data, PLoS is providing a set of information on every published article, that can be used by researchers, readers, funders, administrators and those interested in the evaluation of scientific research.

The usage data includes more than four years of statistics from all seven peer-reviewed PLoS journals and will be updated on a daily basis. The publisher aims to demonstrate how individual articles can be judged on their own merits rather than on the basis of the journal in which they are published.

PLoS hopes that the provision of these data will encourage other publishers to make such data available, which will lead ultimately to broader improvements in scholarly communication and research assessment.

The PLoS article metrics include the new online usage data (HTML page views, PDF downloads and XML downloads) that are compliant with the industry standard, as well as citation counts, comments, ratings, social bookmarks and blog coverage.

Visitors to the journal sites will need help to understand the published data because previously very few data have been made public by scholarly publishers, said the publisher. It is providing summary tables that allows users to see how an article compares with various average measures. In addition, the complete raw data set is also available as a download for those wishing to examine the data in detail.