Alternative metrics, or "altmetrics" aim to capture the impact of scholarly communication beyond journal, book/chapter, and conference proceeding citation counts. As platforms such as social media become an increasingly important part of scholarly communication, altmetric tools can capture an author's activity in these venues. Diverse methods of communicating scholarly artifacts such as slide shows, data sets or performances can also be captured with alternative metrics.
Altmetric data can be used as a complement to traditional citation data in order to provide a more complete picture of a scholar's range of impact in their field. Metrics can be specific to the artifact, such as the Altmetric badge in this sample article or the PlumX metrics in this sample article. Alternatively, there are metrics that show overall author activity, such as the paid Altmetric Explorer product. Institutional repositories can also offer author level impact information, such as the global download map of an author's collective works in the CUNY Academic Works platform.
Altmetric tracks the utilization of a particular artifact using factors such as Facebook mentions, LinkedIn mentions, X (formerly Twitter) mentions, etc. and summarizes this information in the altmetric badge. The badge is a multicolored donut, where the colors reflect the different types of channels the scholarly work has appeared in. There is also an overall attention score listed in the center of the badge summarizing impact. Users can navigate to a map view within the platform to see the global activity around their scholarly work. Scholars can also use these instructions to embed the badges directly in their personal web pages.
PlumX captures a comprehensive set of research metrics in five categories, each represented by a color. In addition to the typical citation and usage metrics such as download and views, the captures area records number of times the artifact has been loaded to citation tools, blog, Wikipedia and news media mentions (through Lexis Nexis), Facebook shares and comments and SSRN user rating of the artifact.
You can find PlumX metrics linked to specific articles in publisher web platforms or apply PlumX metrics on the author level in Digital Commons.
