Altmetrics for Researchers

"Over the last decade, scholars have begun a great migration into online spaces, moving workflows, and discussions to online platforms like Mendeley, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and more. In these new spaces, once-invisible interactions like reading, saving, discussing, and recommending become visible. They leave traces. Observing these traces can inform new metrics of scholarly influence and impact -- so-called altmetrics."

"An approach called altmetrics -- short for alternative metrics--aims to measure Web-driven scholarly interactions, such as how often research is tweeted, blogged about, or bookmarked."

"Altmetrics aim to measure different forms of significance and usage patterns by looking not just at the end publication, but also the wider process of research, collaboration, and contact around the research publications."

"The aim of altmetrics is to expand our views on impact, by considering new data sources and metrics. Altmetrics considers all stages and products of scholarly research (from 'social' literature search via Facebook to discussion of published results with readers via Twitter), including any impact a publication or an author may have on other people, e.g., retweeting a tweet, downloading or bookmarking an article, sharing a blog post in social networks, or following the author--in short, a scholars 'scientific "street cred"'."

"What a difference a word makes. For all new grant applications from 14 January [2013], the US National Science Foundation (NSF) asks a principal investigator to list his or her research "products" rather than "publications" in the biographical sketch section. This means that, according to the NSF, a scientist's worth is not dependent solely on publications. Data sets, software and other non-traditional research products will count too."

Unlike the JIF [Journal Impact Factor], altmetrics reflect the impact of the article itself, not its venue. Unlike citation metrics, altmetrics will track impact outside the academy, impact of influential but uncited work, and impact from sources that aren't peer-reviewed."