Digital Science and Research Square are pleased to announce a partnership which will see Dimensions Badges display on all Research Square preprints. The US-based company behind the world’s fastest-growing preprint platform will use Dimensions to provide early citation data on preprints and will provide four different types of data: total citations, most recent citations, the Field Citation Ratio (FCR), and Relative Citation Ratio (RCR).
Dimensions is a research information platform designed to give researchers a broader view of the research process. The Dimensions Badge is an easy-to-use data visualization tool that allows authors to demonstrate the impact of their preprint via detailed citation metrics directly from an author’s public preprint page. Readers can gain a better understanding of a preprint’s influence within a specific research field as well as across disciplines.
Understanding the impact of one’s work is important to every researcher. Traditionally, impact is measured by the number of times an article is cited in the literature. Given the rise in preprints over the past few years and the role of preprints in disseminating COVID-19-related findings, preprints are increasingly being considered citation-worthy parts of the overall body of literature.
Research Square also provides other usage data for preprints, such as the number of times a preprint has been viewed, downloaded, and commented on. In addition to the Dimensions Badge, an AltmetricBadge is displayed on Research Square preprints and provides detailed information on the overall attention a preprint has received across a range of websites including news pages, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit.
Christian Herzog, CEO Dimensions, said: “Pre-prints are getting more important by the day — the COVID-19 pandemic is changing how research is and needs to be communicated at a breathtaking pace — finally. Speed is of the essence obviously, openness as well — and that is exactly why we include pre-prints in Dimensions which is updated daily. The Altmetric and Dimensions Badges are now adding much-needed context to the pre-prints and we are excited that they are provided to the reader in context, on the Research Square platform.”
Amye Kenall, VP of Publishing and Product at Research Square, said: “Accurate and comprehensive metrics are critical for establishing preprints as legitimate objects within the research ecosystem. As more and more papers are stopping at the preprint stage (never proceeding to formal publication), it is important that these papers are also included in the linked scholarly information dataset. Including Dimensions Badges on the Research Square platform helps to accomplish this, and we’re excited to announce such an impactful partnership.”
Adding the Dimensions Badge to Research Square preprints provides an easy way for authors to monitor the impact of their work and provides greater transparency to the research community as to how preprints are being cited.
For more information, please visit www.researchsquare.com.
