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Impact Metrics

What are Altmetrics?

Altmetrics or alternative metrics measure the attention a resource generates on the web. These metrics complement traditional metrics.

What altmetrics count?

  • Usage: the number of views and downloads where the resource is stored
  • Mentions:  the number of mentions on social media (X, specialised social media such as ResearchGate, blog posts), policy documents, mainstream media,  Wikipedia articles, comments on peer review platforms such as Pubpeer or  Publons
  • Captures: the number of captures in bookmarking tools such as Diigo or reference management tools as Mendeley
  • Citations: in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of science

A beginner's guide to Altmetrics from the Altmetric Youtube Channel

  • Measure impact almost immediately: it is possible to monitor the online mentions of a work as soon as it is published
  • Cover more diverse research outputs and sources than traditional metrics
  • Broader non-academic audience:  it can show attention beyond the academic world, where people may use but not cite research
  • Metrics can be easily manipulated
  • Invisibility: If a publication is more accessible, it is more likely to be cited. Altmetrics benefit researchers who have a strong online profile and are active on social and other media
  • Popularity does not always reflect the quality of research
  • Lack of stability on data sources as some of them come and go (Ex: Connotea)
  • Standards remain at the stage of development. In 2016, the US National Information Standards Organization (NISO) published a document to standardise practices concerning these new metrics
  • Without the analysis of the context, altmetrics indicators can not measure the impact research but only the “attention gathered by a research publication”

Tools

  • A platform owned by the data science company Digital Science
  • Offers Bookmarklets for researchers and Institutional repository embeddable badges for free
  • The bookmarklet allows to look up for metrics and underlying qualitative data.

  • Public Library of Science (PLOS) is an Open Access publisher
  • Offers the Article Level Metrics (ALM) application, which is freely available for all PLOS articles.

  • Web-based service, developed by publishing and technology professionals in 2013
  • Free for researchers under registration and requires payment for publishers, funders and Institutions
  • Compiles citations counts from Web of Science (where licensed) and altmetrics from Altmetric.com


Publisher websites

Some publishers such as Springer usually integrate Altmetrics data in their websites:

  • With a badge or summary visualisation
  • With metric reports that include download and page-view information

 

IHEID databases providing altmetric indicators:

Database Altmetric indicators
Anthrosource Altmetric donut: mentions, citations (from Dimensions), readers/captures.
Cambridge Journals Altmetric donut: mentions, citations (from Dimensions), readers/captures. Article usage: full text views.
Elsevier Science Direct PlumX: captures (Mendeley), citations (Scopus, Crossref), mentions (blogs).
Jstor Only citations in Jstor.
Oxford Journals Altmetric donut: mentions, citations (from Dimensions), readers/captures. Citations from Oxford site. Article usage: views.
Sage journals Journal metrics: IF, Eigenfactor, Citescore, SNIP, Scimago journal rank. Article usage: total views and downloads from Sage. Altmetric donuts: mentions, citations, captures/readers.
Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) Usage indicators: downloads, views. Mentions from news and blogs, citations, captures provided by PlumX.
Springer Article usage: views and downloads. Citations from Web of Sciences and CrossRef. Altmetric donut: mentions on social media, readers.
Taylor and Francis (Routledge) Article usage: views. Citations from Web of Sciences, Scopus and CrossRef. Altmetric Donut: mentions on social media, readers.
Wiley Online library Altmetric Donut : mentions, readers and citations in Dimensions.

  • A platform owned by the data science company Digital Science
  • Offers a subscription for an Almetric explorer. It enables an institution to track the attention that publications by an individual researcher or university/institute get in social media.

  • Data company, owned since 2017 by Elsevier
  • Offers several products such as PlumX metrics, which embeds the metrics about a publication directly into an institutional repository, or "Plum Prints" displaying article usage, mentions, citations and shares that are available through the Scopus database for items indexed in Scopus.
Functionalities

Detection of gaming Gaming and spam detection N/A Gaming detection N/A
Disambiguation Disambiguate links Disambiguate links and authors Disambiguate links and authors using ORCID Disambiguate authors using ORCID
Normalisation Data (not score) normalisation N/A N/A N/A
User access Registration required for some products, a few products and trial versions for free Subscription based Free access Registration required, free access for researchers, fees for publishers, funders and institutions
Data sources        
Social Bookmarking/ Reference managers Mendeley Mendeley Mendeley Same as Altmetric
Video, Photo and slide sharing YouTube YouTube, Vimeo, slideshare N/A Same as Altmetric
Social networks Facebook (mentions on curated list of public pages only), Sina Weibo and Pinterest X Facebook Same as Altmetric
Microblogging X (Historical sources, they no longer supply an open feed) X X Same as Altmetric
Recommendations and review systems Publons, Reddit Reddit, Goodreads, Amazon reviews, SourceForge F1000 prime, reddit Same as Altmetric
Online digital libraries/repositories/information systems Dimensions which retrieves data from CrossRef, Pubmed, Opencitations, and some publishers, Web of Science (where licensed) PMC, Scopus, CrossRef, ePrints, DSpace, Figshare,WorldCat, Repec, Ebsco (historical only), Scielo, SSRN, see the full list. PMC, PubMed, Scopus, CrossRef, Figshare,  Web of Science, Plos journals Same as Altmetric
Others Policy documents,  global news in several languages, Wikipedia, Open syllabus Project (historical data) and a curated list of blogs Policy documents, GitHub, a curated list of blogs, Stack Exchange Wikipedia  

Sources:

  • Erdt, Mojisola, Aarthy Nagarajan, Sei-Ching Joanna Sin, and Yin-Leng Theng. "Altmetrics: An Analysis of the State-of-the-Art in Measuring Research Impact on Social Media". Scientometrics 109, no. 2 (1 November 2016): 1117–66.
  • Websites of Altmetrics providers