Insights: Our view of the Contrimetric plugin
On February 5, 2025
We are always looking for new, innovative ways to enhance the impact of our journals and articles, increase audiences, and improve the ‘stickiness’ of our research platform. In line with this, we recently trialled the Contrimetric Plugin, and want to share some of our views here.
The Product
Contrimetric is a bibliometric framework that includes a new calculation metric – the Article Citation Contribution Index (ACCI), a unique metric that evaluates how individual articles contribute to their journal’s impact. This framework is the foundation for the Contrimetric Plugin, which aims to interface for researchers and publishers to explore citation impact in real time.
Our Assessment
The Contrimetric Plugin is an AI-powered tool that simplifies and enhances how academic content is accessed and used. It includes a range of features including article level citation monitoring with real-time updates and recommendations for follow-up reading.
Potential Benefits
The first major advantage was enhanced article discoverability. We found that the AI-based recommendation engine highlights our works to a broader audience, ensuring that impactful research is not overlooked. The second benefit was a tailored user experience, with related article suggestions. By recommending related articles, the plugin helps to retain user attention and increase the time they spend on our KnE Open platform, enhancing readership levels and boosting the potential for citation opportunities for our journals.
Potential Disadvantages
However, while we found the plugin to be helpful in improving visibility, we did come across some drawbacks. First, the plugin relies on the accuracy of citation data from sources like Web of Science and Scopus, and therefore incomplete or outdated citation records may affect results. Secondly, we noticed that the recommendation system had an occasional tendency to prioritise highly cited papers or journals from larger publishers, potentially overshadowing or disregarding less cited but equally significant works, creating an uneven playing field for researchers and journals. Finally, as is increasingly the case in the current ‘publish or perish’ climate, there is the possibility that unethical actors could exploit the metrics to increase their citation counts artificially, undermining the credibility and integrity of articles and journals without proper safeguards
Our Verdict
To conclude, we recommend using this feature to improve the amount of time readers spend on the journal’s website. It is useful in understanding citation data and analysing how to leverage this data. At the same time, we hope to see developments in the plugin that will address concerns regarding exploitation, bias and inaccuracies.