Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis : Alternative Metrics
Resources to help researchers measure journal, article, and author impact factors. Includes traditional citation evaluation as well as alternative methods.
What are Altmetrics?
'Altmetrics' is the creation and study of new metrics based on the Social Web for analyzing and informing scholarship. For a detailed description, read "Altmetrics: a Manifesto".
Altmetrics Tools
- Impact StoryCreate a metrics report for your articles, data sets, slides, software, or webpages. Free!
- AltmetricLabels articles with an altmetrics score, which is a quantitative measure of the quality and quantity of attention that a scholarly article has received. It is derived from three main factors: volume, sources, and authors of mentions.
Researchers can create their own 'badges' to display and share article data on their personal websites for free: Altmetric Badge - Plum AnalyticsTracks more than 20 different types of artifacts, including journal articles, books, videos, presentations, conference proceedings, data sets, source code, cases, and more. With this suite of tools, you can answer questions about research that you can't answer today: How do I provide quantifiable research outcomes in pursuit of grant funding? How do I tell how departments or labs measure up to their peers? How do I discover “rising stars” in different research areas for recruiting or co-research purposes?
- PLOS Article-Level MetricsArticle-Level Metrics are available, upon publication, for every article published by PLOS. Researchers can stay up-to-date with their published work and share information about the impact of their publications with collaborators, funders, institutions, and the research community at large. These metrics are also a powerful way to navigate and discover others’ work. Metrics can be customized to address the needs of researchers, publishers, institutional decision-makers, or funders.
Where Does the Data Come From?
- FacebookFacebook 'shares', 'likes', and comments for articles can be incorporated into altmetric data.
- figshareViews, shares, and downloads can be collected in altmetric data.
- MendeleyThe number of times an article has been added to reader or group libraries can be tracked. The career stage, discipline, and country of readers viewing the article can also be shown.
- PubMed and PubMed CentralPDF downloads, abstract views, full text views, supporting data views, unique IP views, figure views can all be incorporated into altmetric data.
- ScopusThe number of times an item has been cited by other records in Scopus can be incorporated into altmetrics reports.
- SlideShareTime favorited, comments, shares, and views can all be used in altmetric data.
- TwitterTwitter users can mention articles and authors in their tweets, and these tweets can be quantified.
- WikipediaNumber of times an article is mentioned in Wikipedia can be tracked for altmetric data.