Altmetrics

Abstract

David Crotty PhD concludes his series of four articles discussing the difficult area of different metrics for journals and researchers The previous articles in this series have looked at the standard metrics in use for measuring research impact. Nearly all of these are based on citations, with an assumption that citations are a reasonable proxy for impact. In the digital era, we can now track the life of each individual paper and better understand how it is read and how it is used. This allows us to measure different types of impact beyond citation. Altmetrics are essentially attention metrics, attempts to measure the amount of attention and public conversation stimulated by a given article. Altmetrics look at a variety of inputs, which vary depending on who is doing the measurement and how they have chosen to weigh each input relative to one another (and these complex weighting formulae are usually not disclosed). Typical inputs include activity on social networks and social bookmarking sites, mainstream media and blog coverage, and whether anyone has left any comments on the article. Some flavours of Altmetrics include usage data and inclusion in government policy documents.

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