With the help of our Digital Science colleagues from Altmetric, Dimensions created a visually stimulating yet metric-packed icon that provides an easy-to-digest snapshot of a publication’s citation history and showcases the rich Dimensions data. We shared a blog post after the launch, which provides some interesting behind the scenes insights into the design process and details the metrics. You can read more about what the metrics mean and how they are calculated here. Since then, we’ve enjoyed spotting the badges “in the wild” and hearing from users about why they chose to implement the colorful badges into their site.

We had the pleasure of interviewing some very early adopters, both publishers and valued partners, to learn more about their experience and thoughts of Dimensions Badges.

Meet our guest bloggers

Sierra Williams
PeerJ, Community Manager
PeerJ is an Open Access publisher with a mission to make Open Access affordable, fast and easier for researchers and institutions.

Clare Hooper
Liverpool University Press, Head of Journals
LUP’s mission is to disseminate high-quality scholarly research and to promote learning and culture through the publication of books and journals

Megan Ainsworth
Liverpool University Press, Journals Publishing Executive
LUP’s mission is to disseminate high-quality scholarly research and to promote learning and culture through the publication of books and journals.

Q: Why did you choose to display the badges?

Sierra: As a researcher-focused publisher, it is PeerJ’s priority to make sure our article format is always up-to-date, delivering the most relevant information for researchers. Citation data is difficult to come by, and no two sources tend to have the same set of primary records to count citations. In that type of situation, it is great to have an additional source to create a consensus. Accurate citation data is important to our authors and we are always looking for new ways to display this information. The Dimensions Badges are visually appealing and also show a comprehensive amount of information so it was a good fit.

Clare: We wanted to be able to measure the performance of not just our journal titles, but the articles themselves. Even the free version of Dimensions has great functionality.

The Dimensions Badges give an immediate insight into the impact an article has had through citation data and altmetrics, enabling authors, editors, reviewers of the journal (and visitors to our website) to view citation data through a clear, interactive visualization.

Q. How easy was it to add them to your platform?

Megan: The integration was simple; our website host added the necessary code to our website HTML and the badges appeared for those articles with data. We chose the medium-sized badge to match up with the size of the Altmetric donut, which was already in place.

Sierra: Using a single line of JavaScript and HTML tag we were able to integrate this into our article format within a few minutes.

Q. What value will badges provide to authors or readers?

Sierra: The number of citations is obviously important, but it is great to see that the Dimensions Badges provide more context behind the numbers and invites further exploration. Authors and readers can see where the citations have come from and can get a sense of how recent the citations are and how the number compares to other publications in the same field.

Clare: The Dimensions Badges make citation data available easily and clearly, giving context to a piece of research through four citation-related metrics (Citations, Recent Citations, Field Citation Ratio, Relative Citation Ratio), and enabling authors and readers to assess the impact of the article.

The badges also enable users to explore article citation data further as Dimensions Details Pages on the free platform can be accessed through any Dimensions Badge. This is an effective and simple way for researchers (both author and reader) to view citation data in more detail.

Q. What is your favorite feature?

Megan: Discoverability and linked information. The click-through link from the free Dimensions platform to the full text on the publisher platform enhances the discoverability of the research published in our journals, increasing traffic to our website and encouraging engagement with our content.

Researchers can discover LUP content quickly and get it directly from us, which is a big step in the right direction towards connecting the research community to relevant scholarly publications in a straightforward way.

Sierra: The design is great! It fits very well with PeerJ’s sleek article design.

Dimensions can help resolve researcher frustrations with easy access to published research while still respecting the access rights of publishers and their relationships with authors and readers. The Dimensions team continues to build on the initial efforts to provide one-click access to some OA content by working with publishers, institutions, and researchers in hopes of streamlining access to the best available, legitimate version of journal articles and chapters. Watch this space as development continues.

Interested in adding Dimensions Badges to your website?

Dimensions Badges can easily be embedded into any webpage with just a simple line of code. The documentation includes a handy “Badge Builder”, which can help users configure the badge appearance and behavior. The badges are free for individual researchers, academic institutional repositories, and certain publishers to use (but terms of commercial use may vary – click here more information).

If you are a publisher interested in implementing Dimensions Badges, please contact us at ds-publishing@digital-science.com to see if you qualify.