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Research Impact

Altmetrics

No one can read everything. We rely on filters to make sense of the scholarly literature, but the narrow, traditional filters are being swamped. However, the growth of new, online scholarly tools allows us to make new filters; these altmetrics reflect the broad, rapid impact of scholarship in this burgeoning ecosystem. We call for more tools and research based on altmetrics.

Jason Priem , Dario Taraborelli , Paul Groth , and Cameron Neylon

What are altmetrics?

The term altmetrics is a compound from the words “alternative” and “metrics” actually meaning the creation and study of new metrics based on the social web for analyzing and informing scholarship. Altmetrics is an extension of the impulse to measure, track and analyze scholarly activity as it suits to the practices and tools of the current age.

What are the characteristics of altmetrics?

The definition of altmetrics reflects three distinctive characteristics within the spectrum of impact:

  • the inseparable nature of altmetrics and the social media,
  • the drive force of altmetrics is the "new", first in the sense of the necessity to create new metrics and secondly in the availability of new data derived from social media,
  • the connection between altmetrics and scholarship.

What are the levels of altmetrics?

Altmetrics can be grouped in three levels, focusing on the items different altmetrics choose to measure rather than the methods they use to produce their results. The levels of altmetrics are the following:

What are the advantages of using altmetrics?

As with traditional measures there are several advantages in using altmetrics:

  • they are good at measuring the tone of opinion regarding an output and whether it is being cited for negative or positive reasons,
  • they offer immediate results when measuring impact which is very useful for new researchers at the start of their career,
  • they use a newer and wider range of sources to calculate atlmetric scores,
  • they provide better impact measures in particular fields like arts and humanities.  

What are the limitations of using altmetrics?

Altmetrics like traditional measures have some limitations that appear below:

  • they use social media a lot to calculate the final score but not all disciplines or researchers do so,
  • commercial firms that produce altmetrics are criticized in terms of how unbiased measurements they offer as they do it for profit,
  • multiple versions of a research output like preprints can be counted multiple times as altmetrics cannot always distinguish between output types.