Crowdsourcing Scientific Impact

The use of citation-based data to assess research impact has sparked a lively debate in recent years. Despite widespread criticism, the most famous citation-based indicator (Impact Factor) is still used as a de facto standard in many disciplines to assess the importance of scientific journals. Evaluation agencies and funding bodies have prompted researchers to identify new ways to measure impact and a growing attention has been directed to usage factors. Collaborative annotation systems offer an unexploited source of data about the collective consumption of research articles. In this talk I discuss some results from a work in progress looking at how the "wisdom of the crowds" can be harnessed to produce alternative indicators of impact.