Guidance for Researchers: Altmetrics
A Beginner's guide to Altmetrics
What are Altmetrics?
Altmetrics (alternative metrics) seek to measure impact or reach of research and scholarship. Altmetrics differs from traditional bibliometrics in that it examines online interactions. Altmetrics are designed to complement not replace traditional measures of academic success such as citation counts, journal prestige (impact factor), and author H-index.
Altmetric data can include:
- tweets, mentions, shares or links
- downloads, clicks or views
- saves, bookmarks, favourites, likes
- mainstream media mentions and
- readers, subscribers, watchers, or followers.
Almetric data can provide information such as:
- How many times an article has been downloaded
- Who is viewing specific research
- Whether a scholarly piece been picked up by a news agency
- How many times research has been shared on certain forms of social media
Where to find altmetrics
Providers of altmetric data inlcude: PlumX Metrics, Altmetric.com and Mendeley, a free to join reference manager (and sharer) aimed at researchers and students.
Many publishers now include altmetric data within their resources. For example, in Scopus, altmetric data is provided by Altmetrics.com. Altmetric data is also shown in search results within the BCU Library Summon search results by the Altmetric.com badge or doughnut.
Further Resources
- Impact Factors and AltmetricsThis presentation provide a brief overview of traditional publication impact factors and the emerging field of altmetrics.
- Altmetrics in ContextBrief guide to altmetrics by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries .
- Think, Check, SubmitThis website helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research.