Altmetrics

Introduction to altmetrics

Scholarly communication is changing, and we need new and different ways of measuring our communications in order to get the complete picture of the impact of research outputs, many of which are not traditional papers and therefore cannot be measured by traditional metrics (e.g., citation counts or the Journal Impact Factor).

Using altmetrics means measuring, for example, how many times something has been tweeted, shared on blogs, mentioned on Facebook etc, mentioned in a policy document, and more. This information can then be shared visually as the ‘altmetric donut’. Here’s an example from an article in CCCU’s Research Space Repository:

Watch this video for further information about altmetrics and how they are used to measure research impact:

Problems with altmetrics

Although altmetrics have become more popular since the late 2000s, they are not without their own problems. Explore this infographic to learn more about the issues with altmetrics.