IPSWICH, Mass. — May 28, 2014 — Plum™ Analytics, which makes it possible to measure research impact more easily, announces that its product PlumX™, is now Shibboleth-enabled. This will allow those performing, funding or monitoring research to use a single sign-on to access the information about research impact. By allowing single sign-on, Plum Analytics, an EBSCO company, enables users easier access to the alternative metrics it provides from the authentication systems popular in academic institutions and corporate enterprises and ensures that only authorized users update researcher information.
PlumX is a research dashboard that harvests metrics from a wide variety of sources to provide information to help understand research impact. By carefully designing and developing the architecture, features and security, Plum Analytics delivers a product that large enterprises and institutions require. By using Shibboleth, PlumX is supporting the ways in which enterprises connect users to applications
The Shibboleth-enabled authorization also provides the identification process necessary to safeguard researchers’ profiles. By using this authentication method, PlumX knows who is using PlumX and allows for researchers to update their own profiles but not others. Likewise, other authorized users, such as a liaison librarian, can update specific researcher profiles, while preventing others from doing so.
PlumX, named Library Journal’s most ambitious database in 2013, gathers metrics across five categories—usage, mentions, captures, social media and citations. Metrics are gathered around what Plum Analytics calls artifacts—more than just the journal articles that a researcher authors. The information collected is presented in a variety of ways including data visualizations, dashboards, and widgets. Plum Analytics is the only company synthesizing this metrics data for custom analysis for each institution and for publishers.
“From the start, we wanted to build a product that fulfills the needs of large institutions,” said Plum Analytics President Andrea Michalek. “Supporting Shibboleth in PlumX is one way we are doing this. Not only is Shibboleth the way many large enterprises connect their users to systems; we can also securely grant access to the right people to update the right profiles.”
For more information about PlumX and Plum Analytics, please visit: http://www.plumanalytics.com/
About Plum™ Analytics
Plum Analytics was founded in 2012 with the vision of bringing modern ways of measuring research impact to individuals and organizations that use and analyze research. By carefully designing and deliberately collecting the big data created when individuals interact with research, Plum Analytics delivers products and services that provide contemporary information about research impact. Plum Analytics gathers metrics (often called altmetrics) about research from more than thirty sources including PLOS, PubMed and YouTube, and categorizes them into Usage, Captures, Mentions, Social Media and Citations. Its product, PlumX, is an impact dashboard that provides information on how research output is being utilized, interacted with, and talked about around the world. For more information, visit www.plumanalytics.com.
About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading provider of resources for libraries including EBSCONET®, EBSCO’s total e-resource management system, and EBSCOhost®, the world's premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives and e-books. EBSCO provides more than 375 research databases and nearly 600,000 e-books plus subscription management services for more than 360,000 unique titles including more than 57,000 online titles. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of journals and magazines than any other discovery service. For more information, visit the EBSCO Web site at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com
