Delighted to join with with our Piper and welcome you to the University of Stirling. This is fairly typical Scottish weather at this time of year. It's a lovely autumnal day in between the showers of rain. Do take the opportunity to walk around our beautiful campus if you've not

already done so and see a bit of what makes this place very special. This is a historic designed parkland estate for the Airethrae Castle which is on the other side of campus you can walk across to it. So the whole campus environment was designed as a parkland back in the 18th century. We

almost go as far as the Wallace Monument which celebrates a very famous battle just outside the University campus down in the middle of Stirling. So we have a great natural and built heritage here on campus and that's part of what makes this university we think a very special place.

Just a word or two about about the university not to give you all the the stats and the details of that but to say something a little bit about the kind of organisation that we are. The University of Stirling was founded in 1967. We're one of the Robins universities, part of the initial large-scale expansion of higher educational opportunity in the UK and

we were founded very much on values of access to education, inclusion and innovation and enterprise. We were also founded very deliberately on a blend of the science and the arts. For a university of our age we actually have a very substantial art collection and that use of the visual arts, the

creative arts, the arts and humanities and the social sciences woven in with our science base has always been a core part of the university's ethos and I'll say a little more about the research here at Stirling in a moment. We're still very much a university that values ability. We want

to be open to all of those who have the ambition and aspiration and ability to succeed in the courses and the programmes of study that we offer. Our intake, our domestic intake is overwhelmingly from state schools, from Scottish state schools but we're also a highly international university so there's a really interesting mix and blend of the

student body here in the university which we really value. Our core business we define as being transformational, encouraging transformation primarily in individuals. The students that pass through the university in terms of the mindsets, the approaches, the beliefs, the values that they take out into the wider world whether here in Scotland or in

all parts of the globe and we see our role very much as preparing our graduates for the future world of work and for being able to make a deep and sustained personal and collective impact on that world. We are a modestly sized university, we're one of the smallest research universities in the UK

and we have a very distinctive subject mix and subject blend. We do some things really well, we do other things not at all and we're not troubled about that in the slightest because another core part of our approach is to work in partnership and in collaboration with a whole range of different organisations whether academic, company, public sector or whatever and we work

both here in Scotland and across the globe. We are very proud of our strapline which is be the difference because that says to us that we're always looking for new ways to do things, we always want to be challenging the status quo, challenging the conventional and thinking and doing

through our innovation programmes, thinking about and finding new ways of doing things. And I think very much relevant to the discussion that you'll be having over the next couple of days and Stirling has always been an institution very much committed to open scholarship. We were one of the very first UK universities to make mandatory the deposit of scholarly

articles and scholarly output in our online repository and we still have a through to all of our web-based material and our propagation of research findings and I'll say more about that just in a moment. Our research is

highly interdisciplinary, you don't have to believe me that it's highly interdisciplinary, has that gone off? No? You're still okay? You don't have to believe me that it's highly interdisciplinary, if you run the SciVal evaluation on Stirling you will see that we are uncharacteristically interdisciplinary in our approach. That in part is a product of our size, it in part is a product of our subject mix, but it's

largely because all the research that we do, all the work that we do is focused on outcomes. It's focused not on identifying that there are problems, it's focused on identifying the solutions to those programme problems. Putting a great deal of work at the moment with our regional economy here

in the Forth Valley to develop new approaches to business that both support shared prosperity, what we call in Scotland inclusive growth, which is a core government priority, but that shared prosperity needs to be delivered in ways that protect and enhance our natural resources. And our work in

environmental science and in the combination of environmental science and economic development typifies that interdisciplinary solution focused approach to all that we do. There's lots more information on our website about the research that we do in Stirling and I think it's fantastic. I've been here about 15 years. This is a great quirky little university. I've worked in

many other universities before and they all have their own strengths, but there's something highly distinctive that I certainly take great professional satisfaction from in the way in which we go about our work. I'm particularly delighted that the Altmetrics conference is here in Stirling because I think the work that Altmetrics do and that we and other

institutions do with Altmetric is really, really essential. And there's a couple of ways in which I'd just like to illustrate that. The first is that in our strategic plan, you'll see quite an interesting commitment to enhance our research profile by 100 percent.

And when I first saw that written down in the draft strategy, I thought, what does that actually mean? Because it's not about measuring the easy thing to measure. It's not about measuring research money. It's not about measuring research students. How do you measure research profile? Well, of course, one of the things that we all do is we publish our research evaluation framework, our research excellence framework

and REE scores, don't we? We put out the marks of academic excellence. We publish our field weighted citations. We publish all sorts of different metrics. We look at the league tables, which are generated both domestically and internationally, and we publish all of those marks of success.

That absolutely nobody outside the academic world understands or cares about. That's not how you communicate the importance of what we as a sector do. One of the things that we've been doing for the last two or three years is systematically ranking and publishing

on our web our most popular papers, our most popular papers identified by the reach that they have outside the conventional academic literature. And we use Altmetric to track that and we publish the doughnuts alongside each of those. And we track systematically and link the Altmetric coverage to track the very structured

approach that we take to getting our research noticed, not by other academic colleagues elsewhere, but by the people who are impacted by the outcomes of the research that we do. And getting research noticed in ways that actually address the popular understanding of research outcomes

is critically important. And we need to know as an institution that that approach is working and it's working effectively. And we need to know when we use Altmetric to establish what's trending, what's out there, how can we reinforce those messages? We believe that what we do is important and we want to tell people in language that matters to them.

Sorry, it's a bit too early in the day for Johnson and Trump. But this, to my mind, is also critically important. We as a sector, we as universities have long had a responsibility to tell the truth,

to evaluate systematically, to understand the evidence and however troublesome and difficult it might be to tell the truth. And we live in a world that is dominated by a type of populism that is not interested very often in the truth. It's interested in a message that is palatable

to a significant section of the population. Trump and Johnston, in my view, the university, of course, is apolitical, but Trump and Johnston, in my view, trade on this populist approach.

Trump, sample of the tweets denying climate change exists. Johnson, prime minister on the back of a Brexit campaign that was entirely made up of falsehoods. I think it's critically important that we get our message collectively about the work that we do, the evidence

that we assemble, the evaluations that we create, the truth that we are custodians of, that we get it out there to people, again, in language, that they understand, that resonates with them. Nobody outside the academy will spend long periods of time reading the academic literature.

So how we translate our messages, our truths, our information, our evidence into messages that matter to the people that benefit from the research that we're all engaged in, I think is critically important. I hope you'll pick up some of those themes over at your conference over the next two days.

The agenda looks fascinating. I know that the discussion will be lively and engaged and you hear some fantastic, really expert inputs. So enjoy the University of Stirling. We're delighted to have you here. Thank you very much indeed for the opportunity to welcome you.

Thanks for this great introduction, and I think it really shows that challenging the status quo is something we should do the upcoming days as well here. And I think it's a great example also to see how practical

the University of Stirling is in applying all metrics in their daily life, right? And that I think is a great example to a lot of universities to follow. OK, welcome to Stirling again. And on behalf of me and Kat, we do a little introduction to the conference itself. We do a bit of admin for you to know where to go,

what to do and all kinds of things coming. We'd like to start a little bit with the organizing committee, just to let you know who organized this conference. David Sommer, David, David's over there. Mike Taylor, who will join us a bit later.

I think a lot of people know Mike Taylor, although if you Google him, you may mixing up with the other Mike Taylor. Hans Salstra, that's me, working at Elsevier as a product manager in research metrics. Joe Was at Crosrath, welcome. Tayana Oliveira from the University of Fluminense in Brazil.

Great to have you here as well. And last but not least, Kat Williams. I give you the microphone. Thank you very much and thank you, everyone, for coming. Could we just get our slides up for the next I think we're a little bit behind. There we go. And to the next one. So thank you to all of the organizing committee

who have been a huge support in organizing the event this year, but also to all of our sponsors. So to Hindawi, Springer Nature, CWTS, Elsevier and Plum Analytics, Wiley, Qdos, Altmetric, Minso Solutions and Research Information. Many of these organizations have supported the conference for several years now, and we're really grateful for the financial backing

that they give that enables us to run it every year to keep the ticket prices low. Hopefully that will continue. And of course, to give out travel grants where we can to enable some people here to come. So thanks again to them. And to the next slide. Thank you very much, of course, to all of you for coming

and making this trip to beautiful Stirling. I'm afraid we didn't order the rain, but it's decided to turn up anyway. Hopefully it might stop at some point. We'd really encourage you over the next two days to have some fun and meet some new people. One of the things that we often find about this conference that is quite nice and that you don't always get is the mixture of people that you get.

So some of you will be very technical in your background. Some of you will be working in libraries or in publishers. Others will, of course, be altmetrics providers or those working with the libraries and publishers who are using these data. So take a chance to say hi to some people you don't know. Learn a bit about what they do. See how they're using this type of data

and perhaps take something away that could be useful for your own roles. So definitely, I think I would encourage you to learn some new stuff, whether it's on the technical side or the more practical side, and use the time to question and consider. There are some very big themes within altmetrics and some of the decisions that you make in how you use these data

potentially have some quite big impacts on how your future roles or the future workings of your organizations might develop. A little bit of admin. The coffee breaks and the Silver Glen restaurant,

which is basically a little bit if you go back in the corridor on the right, there's coffee, tea, etc. The lunch is held in the so-called Abbey Craig dining room, which is familiar to people who already had their breakfast this morning. But it's basically if you come in directly to the right. So if you come into the hotel,

turn right and you are in the Abbey Craig dining room for lunch. Please join the conversation also on Twitter, right? We're here talking about altmetrics, not only the results, but also a bit of the input. So be welcome to actively tweet about this conference. There's also a Twitter account at 6 a.m. conf.

So both the hashtag and the Twitter account itself are available. If you like to make photos, you're welcome. Also, for example, the backpiper was heavily photographed and filmed,

and he gave permission for that to be clear on that. But there may be some people who don't like to be on photos or film. They should have taken a red sticker and put them on their blouse or whatever they were. Please don't include these people in pictures.

Drinks and poster sessions are this evening. You can still sign up also at the registration desk for dinner. So there's a kind of dinner together downtown. If you're interested to join, you can do so by registering before two o'clock this afternoon at the registration desk.

That's a bit of the general admin. I had some last-minute admin things about the technical stuff. We have a microphone available for audience questions. So if you'd like to ask a question, raise your hand and you'll be handed a microphone. There are two headsets for speakers.

So if there's a lineup of four speakers, please make sure after you've spoken, hand it over to one of the upcoming speakers. And for those speakers in sessions that haven't met their session host yet, please report to them in one of the breaks so that also the session host know who they are hosting.

It's not always clear if they haven't met before. Anything else? I think that's for the admin, right? Okay, over to Kat again. Thank you. So hopefully you'll have noticed this is 6 a.m. We started at 1 a.m. six years ago and have slowly moved through the years.

And I think it's been really interesting over the last six years to see how not just the data that we're talking about and the way that it's used have evolved, but actually the conversations that we have around it. So in the last few years in particular, we've noticed that we've really managed to move away from talking about just the numbers to get into much more detail about the underlying data

and what it actually is telling you about how and why people might be engaging with different types of research. And that's conversation that we're really keen to continue this year. You'll hopefully see it in the themes of a lot of the presentations and in how people are going about applying these data in their daily workflows.

At the same time, of course, you know, Altmetrics doesn't exist in a silo. It's very much part of the wider research landscape. And that landscape is changing all the time and perhaps now more radically than ever. There are increasing publisher challenges as we shift more and more to open access and funders are starting to play a bigger role in the conversations there.

And of course the role of librarians and research administrators and others that work to support researchers in their institutions is changing a lot as well. Altmetrics have a part to play in that. But of course there are many other things that come into that as well. And we're keen at this conference to really start connecting those things together. There is a wider increased focus on scholarly communication and societal reach and impact.

You just heard from John how much that is changing the focus that they have here at Stirling. And we'll hear shortly from Martin at King's College London about what they are doing in that regard. And of course there are new challenges in the data and the underlying infrastructure which as an altmetrics provider I can tell you is no easy challenge.

And I'm sure there are others in the room that will relate to that. So as researchers and publishers are wanting to change the way that they are producing and disseminating research we need to think through what that really means for us and how we can continue to ensure that the data we provide and the way that we collect it is useful and can be used.

And then of course as an event setting ourselves up for the future. So thinking about what value do we bring to the community by hosting this event? How do we see it evolving in the future? And this year we've put a particular focus on trying to become more sustainable which I think is a responsibility we all share. If you're staying in this hotel you might still be getting used to your bathroom lights

coming off and on at random times, I am. But Stirling as a venue was chosen particularly because of its sustainable credentials and the work that they do here to try and invest in the environment and put that as a focus in all of the activities that they do. As an event we've made some small steps in this direction.

So I'm afraid the program is online only but that has massively saved the amount of paper that we're producing. All of your neckties are made from sustainable resources. You might have noticed the cardboard banner stand that we have out the front which I think is going to become quite popular actually. I was quite impressed with it. So a big thanks to the team that we work with at Bioscientifica

for helping us to source all of those materials. And helping us in this regard. And of course we'd encourage you to do anything that you can here too. But as much as there have been some really happy times over the last six years, in the last year in particular we've had some really sad news in the Optmetrics community

and we wanted to give the people who worked most closely with the people affected a chance to say a few words. So Joe? Can we have the next slide? So last year some of you may have met my colleague Christine.

Christine Hone. Maybe some of you knew her as Christine Buskey. And last year's conference was her first outing as a member of Crossref. But many of you knew her from previous roles that she had in publishing.

She died back in May from a short illness. But she brought tremendous energy to us at Crossref and her presentation last year which came from her perspective as a researcher in her previous life

I think really communicated really well these really difficult kind of abstract ideas that we're trying to work with and I think her presentation communicated to some people I think better than we could have done before. So like I say she's no longer with us.

Rest in peace. Thank you. Thanks Joe. And sadly that wasn't the only person that we lost in the last year so I'd like to invite Isabella and Rodrigo to say a few words about Judith.

Yeah the next slide please. So this summer we received the sad news that Judith has lost her battle with cancer. We were in the middle of preparing the Altmetrics 19 workshop and I received one of Judith's last emails when we had to decide who to accept to this workshop.

And no words can describe this loss for our community. Judith has received some of the most prestigious awards in the information science and bibliometrics community but these awards really only describe her outstanding research

but not really her personality. Judith was an inspiring researcher, a role model and a good friend and mentor. She loved to travel and to engage with the younger members of the community as you all may know. She always had a lot of energy, she was bursting with new ideas and she was always

very kind to all the people, genuine and truly reliable. If something has her name on it you can be sure that it really contains Judith's thoughts and words. So it was about a year ago that we actually shared the stage with Judith in this very same

venue, this very same place. At that time we were presenting to you the journal of Filemetrics whose editor-in-chief Judith was. The journal was really important for her so we

would really like to invite you and to encourage you to submit your papers along with a way of honoring Judith's work and Judith's memory. So we would like to keep her alive also through our work and the work that we can share through her journal. Thank you very much.

Well thank you for these kind words and again it's not only the joy of Altmetrics but let's keep these people alive in their work and also with the journal. Thank you.

Just as some final comments before I give the microphone again to Kat to introduce Martin. So apart from these conference days, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday there will be the Altmetrics workshop. So if people may have missed that and only thought well it's only

on Wednesday and Thursday they can still sign up at the registration if they like to join the workshop on Friday which is headed by Isabella. I think that's it for the admin and over to you. I would add that yesterday there was a very interesting looking do-a-thon which ran here

that Joe and Lou from Altmetrics ran. So do corner them and ask them about it. I think there were some interesting discussions that took place and we might even persuade them to do a blog write-up of it if we're lucky.