Bibliometrics and Altmetrics: Measuring the Impact of Knowledge

Reading a paper and want to find out its Altmetric details? Install the free bookmarklet for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Just drag it to your bookmarks bar from the Altmetric Bookmarklet web site.

Keep in mind:

1. It works only when DOI is available, and in several databases such as PubMed and arXiv.
2. It works when publishers embed Google Scholar friendly citation metadata.
3. Twitter mentions are only available for articles published since July 2011.
4. Check the FAQ section for more limitations of this tool.

Source: Loria, P. (2013). Impact beyond metrics: Telling your research impact story. (.ppt) [Accessed June, 2014].

The links below will allow you to connect with both altmetrics users and individuals interested in subject:

Attempts to use data derived from social media sources as measures of research influence are intriguing efforts to refine and improve accepted methods, which are widely seen as unsatisfactory for various reasons. It is important to note that these attempts may bring real improvement, or may simply generate more numbers and graphs.

Altmetrics, like established scholarly metrics, measure the activity surrounding a particular scholarly work which is in turn being taken as an indication of the report's scholarly significance. In that respect, it should not be assumed that altmetrics show an altogether different or “better” picture than that which is revealed through other scholarly metrics. Altmetrics are merely seeking to provide a more complete version of that picture.

Concerns have also been raised about the manipulation of these metrics.  A paper published in December of 2012, linked below, examined Google Scholar's services in particular and concluded that it was quite easy to atifically inflate a paper's scores as determined by Google Scholar's metrics.  For further reading on these topics, follow the links below:

The Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology published a special issue on altmetrics in its April/May 2013 issue.

This issue covered topics including the relationship between altmetics and open access, altmetrics and repositories, and the usefulness of altmetrics to scholarship in developing countries.

To read the bulletin, click on the image below: 

Several tools are being developed to help you measure the influence of your scholarly work and tell your impact story:

	http://www.researchgate.net/ - Allows sharing of publications between users, and tracks views, downloads, and citations.
	http://www.academia.edu/ - Allows users to follow the research of other academics.
	http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/ - Displays altmetric information for recently-published articles in the Public Library of Science.
	https://becker.wustl.edu/impact-assessment/how-to-use - Provides a framework for assessment of biomedical research impact
	http://www.peerevaluation.org/
	http://researchscorecard.com/
	http://www.citeulike.org/ - Find out who's reading what you're reading.
	http://figshare.com/ - A repository where users can make their research available in a manner that allows it to be easily cited, shared, and discovered. It tracks views and shares on a few social media platforms.
	http://www.papercritic.com/ - Allows users to share and review scholarly publications. It also tracks mentions of articles on Twitter.
	http://scholarometer.indiana.edu/ - This is a browser plugin that utilizes Google Scholar to provide citation analysis data.

Interested in using these products? Suggest a tool for subscription to your subject librarian or fill out the online form.

	http://www.altmetric.com/ Though some of their services are fee-based, their Altmetric Bookmarklet is a free service that provides metrics on recent literature.
	http://www.plumanalytics.com/index.html  Plum Analytics is still in the development stages. Users are able to sign up for the beta version of the service, though, and the site provides a lot of detail on how it gathers data
	https://impactstory.org/ - Shows the impact of research products in journal articles, blogs, datasets, and software

• Altmetrics: A manifesto
• Beyond Citation Analysis
• PLOS Collections: Altmetrics
• SPARC: Article-Level Metrics Primer