Research Impact

Once you publish an article, you can continue to follow article-level metrics. These metrics include citation counts, usage data, and altmetrics.

Citations

Citation counts are a traditional article-level metric that shows the number of times an article has been cited by others. This data can be seen in Web of Science, Google Scholar, and AltMetrics sites. Why do the counts differ depending on where you look?

• WoS counts = citations in journals indexed by Web of Science only
• GS counts = any captured reference (i.e., articles, books, websites) and not deduplicated
• AltMetrics counts = not 100% clear and changing all the time

Usage Data

Even if articles aren't cited they may have had an impact, and usage data can shed light on that. Usage data can be seen in some research databases and typically on the publisher’s site. Can these numbers be trusted? Maybe, but they don’t tell the whole story. Publisher sites only capture use on their site, not uses of full-text accessed elsewhere. And what counts as a “use” varies by platform (though there are efforts to standardize this).

Altmetrics

Altmetrics (alternative metrics) are a method of measuring citations that take into account online reader behavior, network interactions with content, and social media. Altmetrics are meant to complement traditional impact measures by looking at online attention and engagement. Read more on Altmetrics: A Manifesto. 

Examples of Altermetrics include: 

• Mentions on social media or online news sites, and comments/clicks on blogs or other online forms
• Exports to citation management systems like Mendeley or Zotero
• Downloads of full-text articles, software, etc. 

Strengths of Altmetrics: 

• Gathered and calculated immediately, compared with more traditional methods that slowly accumulate. 
• Capture data from a variety of sources, not just academic publishing and can reflect that broader impact of research 
• Available for research outputs beyond articles, like data sets, software, molecular structures, etc. 

The following boxes include descriptions of the sources for article-level metrics. 

For articles index in Web of Science, you'll be in luck for a one-stop place for many article merics. 

In the Web of Science record for the article, you will find citation counts, a new classification of the citing items (if the article is used in background, discussion, or difference), and uses within the Web of Science database. 

You'll also see the journal-level impact metrics, such as Impact Factor.

Look up articles by title or author name using the SMC Library subscription:

PlumX Metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output artifacts (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment. The five categories of PlumX Metrics are:

• Citations
• Usage
• Captures
• Mentions
• Social media

PlumX Metrics for your scholarship are accessible by looking up the citation in your SMC Scholar Profile.

If you need to add any of your scholarship to your profile, contact your subject librarian. 

Altmetric.com (a source of metrics, not to be confused with altmetrics as a measurement themselves) is a commercial provider of altmetrics data. This sources is most known for the colorful "doughnut" with a corresponding numeric score. Altmetric calculates this score based on the mentions of publications in social media, news, blogs, policy patents, videos, and academic sources.

This is a subscription based service, but you can look up Altmeric scores one at a time by generating a badge based on a DOI and clicking on the generated "donut" image. Some of the detailed information is available for institutional subscribes (SMC is not currently), but summary information is viewable. (See an example)

• Altmetric Badges: Generate a badge for any article with a DOI. Receive and embeddable code used to create the colorful "donut" feature in badge format.