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Measure your Research Performance

Assessing impact using bibliometrics and citation data.

What are altmetrics?

Other pages in this guide have looked at a number of ways to track impact based on citations of journal articles, conference papers etc. These traditional and well-used methods have a number of limitations, including that it can take years for citations to build up (as it takes time for other articles to be written and published).

There is now also increasing interest in altmetrics (alternative metrics) - Tracking how an item is viewed and used online and in social media. It's important to bear in mind that many articles won't have any altmetric data.
Remember that depositing items in our Research Repository can be a great way to share research online.

Altmetrics - Benefits and limitations

Benefits Limitations
  • Altmetrics can build up more quickly than citations - re-tweets can show up within a number of days, citations can take years.
  • Can be used for different types of research output, not just journal articles.
  • Possibility to measure impact with the wider public, outside the academic world.
  • Possibilities for altmetrics to be gamed or manipulated - lots of friends online, anyone?
  • Popularity with the general public is not necessarily an indicator of quality of research.
  • Online use of articles can be difficult to collect accurately, for example for items without identifiers like a DOI.

 

Altmetrics "donut"

There are a number of different ways to find altmetric data, but you'll see the Altmetric.com "donut" below in a number of Library resources, including Wiley Online Library and the British Medical Journal.

Altmetrics donut


The number in the middle of the donut is the Altmetric score, based on number of mentions, by whom and in which sources.

The colourful donut area visualises the type of sources mentioning that score - blue for Twitter, yellow for blogs, red for mainstream media sources etc.
 
A score of 115 places this particular article in the in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric.

 

 

 

Altmetric it!

Want to find out how many times an article has been Tweeted, blogged, or shared on Facebook and Google+?

Try the free Altmetric bookmarklet tool.

1. Drag it to your bookmarks toolbar.
2. When you find the paper online, click the bookmarklet to find Tweets, Facebook mentions, Google+ posts and more.

Note that this will mostly work for recent articles with DOIs.

What are 'altmetrics'?