For decades, scholars - and those who evaluate them - had a limited set of metrics to measure the impact of their work. As scholarship has moved into the digital realm, new opportunities to track its reach and utility have arisen.
Altmetrics, or “alternative metrics,” is a group of new methods for measuring the use and importance of scholarly research, particularly in the sciences. As opposed to more traditional bibliometrics (such as Journal Impact Factor), altmetrics provide article-level data and take into account new electronic interactions and usage, such as number of page views and downloads from a publisher's site, repository views, or discussions generated in online venues such as Twitter or blogs. While altmetrics are meant to supplement and not replace traditional metrics, many believe that article-level metrics help provide a more realistic reflection of the impact of a scholar's work.
Metrics
Usage - clicks, downloads, views, library holdings, video plays
Captures - bookmarks, code forks, favorites, readers, watchers
Mentions - blog posts, comments, reviews, attributions
Social media -likes, shares, Tweets
Citations - PubMed Central, Scopus, USPTO
From the artifacts
abstracts
articles
audio
bibliographies
blog posts
books
book chapters
cases
clinical trials
conference papers
corrections
datasets
expert opinions
figures
file sets
government documents
images
interviews
issues
journals
letters
manuscripts
maps
media
musical scores
newsletters
papers
patents
posters
preprints
presentations
press releases
reference
reports
retractions
reviews
source code
speeches
syllabi
theses / dissertations
videos
volumes
web resources
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