Learn to filter, sort, and visualize Article Level Metrics with Google Fusion Tables and Google Charts

All scientific journal articles published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have Article Level Metrics (ALM) collected about them. These metrics include citation counts, web views, online bookmarks, and more. The metrics are available through a variety of sources including a bulk CSV file.

The CSV data can be uploaded to Google Fusion Tables, a free data hosting service that allows web-based browsing, filtering, and aggregation. The Fusion Tables API supports SQL-like queries and integrates tightly with Google Charts allowing visualization of results in a web browser using Javascript.

The advantage of Javascript compared to Flash or static images is that it works in any web browser including mobile devices, and allows interaction with the data. This makes the visualization easy to share with a large online audience. Javascript is also easy to update if you want to change the query. Visitors will see the new chart version as soon as the script is altered. This requires fewer manual steps than exporting a new image and uploading it.

A complete copy of the PLoS Article Level Metrics data is published in a Summary Excel File. While the API is updated more frequently, the .xls file provides all the data in one download.

The updated .xls file is plos-alm-v5-09182011.xls dated September 18, 2011. The previous version V4 was plos-alm-v4-11302010.xls from November 30, 2010.

This new version of the summary PLoS Article Level Metrics file has also been uploaded to Google Fusion Tables.

The latest version of the bulk PLoS Article Level Metrics data has been uploaded to Google Fusion Tables.

Introduction

Article Level Metrics

The Public Library of Science collects information for each article they publish. These metrics include citations, downloads, web page views, and community responses. The data is available in an Excel XLS file on the PLoS Article Level Metrics site. Now the metric information has also been uploaded uploaded to Google Fusion Tables, a free service for sharing data.