Promoting Your Research Activities
General Information
Alternative impact measures, or altmetrics, aim to complement traditional metrics. They highlight the use of research results on the Internet by considering shares on X, Facebook and other social media, downloads on platforms such as Mendeley, and mentions in blogs, wikis, and news media.
There is some research on the link between altmetrics and traditional citations. Results point to positive and weak correlations between alternative and traditional measures (Haustein 2013, Shema 2014, Costas 2014). This could show that alternative measures do, in fact, provide complementary information to traditional metrics, even if they have many limitations (Sugimoto et al 2017).
The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) published The Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment of the Metrics Project, which includes recommendations on data metrics.
Altmetrics have become a useful tool for research impact metrics outside academia.
For more information...
- Altmetrics data providers: A meta-analysis review of the coverage of metrics and publicationA recent (2020) overview of altmetrics providers and their usage.
- Altmetrics in ContextDocument published by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries in December 2013. Includes a bibliography of about 10 titles on the subject.
- Altmetrics: A ManifestoOne of the earliest documents on altmetrics, published in 2010. It is a good introduction on how alternative impact measures can improve our way of evaluating publications.
Tools
- The Altmetric Bookmarklet at altmetric.comThe bookmarklet installed on your computer provides altmetrics on articles. Altmetric.com offers other services that are, for the most part, available for a fee.
- PlumX MetricsA tool that lets you access altmetrics on individuals, research groups or institutions, for a fee.
- ImpactstoryA free website with open data and an open-source code for discovering the altmetrics of various types of documents (articles, presentations, videos, etc.). The company is also behind other projects, like UnPaywall.
