image courtesy of University of Melbourne Libraries
Altmetrics are alternative metrics used to measure the impact of research.
Altmetrics is characterized in a variety of ways:
Impact measured based on online activity, mined or gathered from online tools and social media for example:
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Metrics for alternative research outputs, for example citations to datasets.
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Other alternative ways of measuring research impact.
Altmetrics can be used as an alternative, or in addition, to traditional metrics such as citation counts and impact factors.
Image: Altmetric bookmarklet result for the article: Piwowar, H. (2013). Altmetrics: value all research products. Nature, 493(7431), 159-159. Screenshot taken Nov 4 2014.
A platform created to allow researchers to share their research. Researchers in all disciplines can share their work and 'follow' others in their field.
A popular social networking tool for professionals in all fields. A LinkedIn profile is similar to an online CV, and makes finding people in particular fields of work or with particular affiliations easier.
Primarily known as a citation management tool, Mendeley includes a social networking element that allows the sharing of research libraries and tracks downloads and views as an alternative research impact measurement.
Similar to Academia.edu, this platform facilitates sharing of research and collaboration with other researchers in your field.
A free online tool for uploading and sharing slide presentations. The number of downloads of your slides can be tracked and used as an alternative measure of research impact.
Twitter can be used to share links and short messages with a large online community. Twitter is increasingly being used as a communication tool within research communities and as a tool to connect with potential collaborators at professional conferences and meetings.
Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials. Like Mendeley, it has a built-in element that facilitates information sharing, tracking and networking shared libraries.
This website provides a growing directory of tools to measure alternative forms of research impact metrics.
Our Research provides open source tools to support scholarly research.
This service aims to provide a more comprehensive measure of a researcher's scholarly impact by gathering data about usage of data sets, open access publications, presentations, blogs and other types of scholarly communication.