Research Impact

What are 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. 

 

Plum Analytics

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

Contact your subject librarian on how to access PlumX Metrics for your scholarship.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.