Alternative Metrics
Alternative metrics (altmetrics) attempt to record scholarly activity beyond traditional academic publishing and citation counts. From the online environment it gathers information from social media--blogs, bookmarks, links, twitter, facebook and other similar sources. It also captures article postings on article hosting sites or citation management tools like Mendeley.
Supporters of alternative metrics propose that altmetrics helps measure the impact of an article in a way traditional metrics do not, especially in regard to the journal impact factor. Some suggest a combination of alternative and traditional metrics give the best view of an article's acceptance, importance and dissemination.
Alternative metrics concentrates on article level metrics (ALM)
Altmetrics: A manifesto
J. Priem, D. Taraborelli, P. Groth, C. Neylon (2010), Altmetrics: A manifesto, 26 October 2010. http://altmetrics.org/manifesto
The Source A blog from Springer Select the tag metrics
Presentations of alternative metrics from Slideshare
Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics Project
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The Indiana University Libraries subscribe to a number of databases from vendor who offer alternative Metrics
Some open source databases also include alternative metrics for the articles retrieved from a search
A few alternative metrics sources offer a bookmark app to reveal the alternative metrics for an article. Altmetric.com is one; you load it to your bookmark bar, and click on it while viewing an article. If it can the app will give you the alternative metrics __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We developed the Metrics Toolkit to help scholars and evaluators understand and use citations, web metrics, and altmetrics responsibly in the evaluation of research. The Metrics Toolkit provides evidence-based information about research metrics across disciplines, including how each metric is calculated, where you can find it, and how each should (and should not) be applied. You’ll also find examples of how to use metrics in grant applications, CV, and promotion packages.
News Tweets Facebook (likes, shares and pages) Blogs Databases Reddits ; Wikipedia (entry and mentions) RSS Videos (video uploaders) Weibo Google+ posts, users Views (abstract views and full text views, supporting data views, unique IP views, figure views) Downloads Readers (Mendeley; CiteULike) Shares (Cite3ULike, Mendeley, Facebook, other social media) Citations (Wordpress.com) Bookmarked items Posters Presentations Slides Datasets Code Captures Exports Link-outs News Mass Media