Todd Carpenter
Executive Director
National Information Standards Organization
Nettie Lagace
Associate Director for Programs
National Information Standards Organization
Earlier this fall, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) published “Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Project,” a recommended practice document on altmetrics, an expansion of tools available for measuring the scholarly impact of research in the knowledge environment. The document represents the discussions and analysis of three working groups: one responsible for compiling definitions for altmetrics and describing use cases covering multiple stakeholder parties; one who assembled registries of alternative outputs and persistent identifiers in scholarly communication, and wrote general recommendations for the application of data metrics; and one who created a “code of conduct” for data providers to ensure data quality in this environment. The overall project, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, began over three years ago while study and development of altmetrics was still in a nascent state; it built on NISO’s strength as a consensus-seeking organization to bring multiple perspectives, nuances, and needs into one set of recommendations for the various players in the scholarly community. NISO is anticipating that its Altmetrics Standing Committee will work to promote and support the recommended practice and continue as an active network of stakeholders to determine next steps for agreement and potential standardization in this area of work which is helping not only to transform how scholars in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are assessed, but to examine and expand value for all kinds of scholarly output.