Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, Crossref, Scite.ai, ... What used to be the home turf of for-profit publishers has become a buzzing field of technological innovation. Scholarly metrics, not only limited to citations and altmetrics, come from a host of data providers using an even wider range of technologies to capture and disseminate their data. Citations come as closed or open data, using traditional text processing or AI methods by private corporations, research projects or NGOs. What is missing is a language and standard to talk about the provenance of scholarly metrics. In this lightning talk, I will present an argument why we need to pay more attention to the processes of tracing and patterning that go into the creation of the precious data that determine our academic profiles, influence hiring and promotion decitions, and even national funding strategies. Furthmermore, I present an early prototype of Metrics in Context, a data specification for scholarly metrics implemented in Frictionless Data. Additionally, the benefits and application of Metrics in Context is presented using both traditional citation data and a selection of common altmetrics such as the number of Tweets or FB shares. |