Altmetric aggregators are useful because they collect statistics about the use of a research product from a variety of sources, such as Mendeley, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, scholarly bookmarking sites, and more.
Altmetric
"Altmetric collects the relevant discussions around each article from Twitter, Facebook, science blogs, mainstream news outlets, YouTube and many more sources - then makes it all available to you in one place. . . Each article is given a score that measures the quantity and quality of attention it has received." (Description from website). While there is a charge to subscribe to this service, Altmetric offers researchers a free bookmarklet they can use in Firefox, Chrome and Safari to view metrics for articles they find on the web (including their own!). Not all articles will have Altmetrics.
Impactstory
"Impactstory is an open-source, web-based tool that helps researchers explore and share the diverse impacts of all their research products—from traditional ones like journal articles, to emerging products like blog posts, datasets, and software." (Description from website). ImpactStory draws statistics from sources such as Twitter, CiteULike, PubMed, Scopus, Mendeley, Dryad, Slideshare, and more. Create your own profile, listing your research articles and other "products" (datasets, slides, etc.), and Impact Story will generate a report that shows the use and influence of your research.
PLoS Impact Explorer
"This page mashes up alt-metrics data from Altmetric with articles from thePublic Library of Science (PLoS). Check which articles are seeing the most buzz from social media sites, newspapers and in online reference managers." (Description from website)
