Elsevier Continues to Expand Journal Analytics Through Acquisition

  • By Staff
  • 02/03/17

Image Credit: Plum Analytics.

Elsevier, a provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, Thursday unveiled the acquisition of an analytics company.

The company has acquired Plum Analytics from EBSCO Information Services. Founded in 2012, Plum Analytics offers “altmetrics,” which “gathers metrics about research from dozens of scholarly sources, media channels and social media, providing a broad measurement of scholarly impact,” according to a news release. Altmetrics categorizes metrics into five types:

  • Usage: Measures clicks, downloads, views, library holdings, video plays and other usage data;
  • Captures: Tracks when end users bookmark, favorite, become a reader or watcher, or any other data that indicates that someone wants to come back to view the work;  
  • Mentions: Shows when end users are engaging with research by indicating mentions on blog posts, comments, reviews and Wikipedia links;
  • Social Media: Tracks likes, shares and tweets about research; and
  • Citations: Measures how many times an article or journal has been cited by others.

Financial terms are not being disclosed, but the transition is effective immediately. Plum metrics will be integrated into Elsevier’s research products, including Scopus, ScienceDirect, Mendeley, Pure and SciVal. The company last year debuted its own metrics called CiteScore for its Scopus basket of journal metrics, and the latest acquisition evidences a commitment to expanding metrics for researchers.

Further information is available on the Elsevier site.

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