A view of altmetrics, from two librarians at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia.

1. Altmetrics: the movement, the
tools, and the implications
Kimberley R. Barker, MLIS
Andrea H. Denton, MILS
January 27, 2015

2. Defining altmetrics
• J. Priem (@jasonpriem), I like the term
#articlelevelmetrics, but it fails to imply
*diversity* of measures. Lately, I’m liking
altmetrics., 4:28 AM - 29 Sep 10, Tweet
• “…the creation and study of new metrics
based on the Social Web for analyzing, and
informing scholarship.”
– http://altmetrics.org/about/

3. Awareness,
not
promotion!

4. Why should you care?
Br J Sports Med doi:10.1136/bjsports-2013-092417

5. Before altmetrics…
• Traditional products and measures of
academic success
– Publications
– Conference presentations/posters
– Committee work
– Number of times your work was cited
– Impact Factor and journal rank
– H-index

6. From metrics to altmetrics
Measures
Traditional
Research
Products
Traditional
- Article
- Chapter
- Books
Times Cited
Impact Factor + Rank
H-index

7. From metrics to altmetrics
Measures
Traditional New
Research
Products
Traditional
- Article
- Chapter
- Books
Times Cited
Impact Factor +
Rank
H-index
Page Views
Downloads

9. The definition of scholarly output
is changing
• NSF “Publications” broadened to “Products of
Research”
As of Jan 2013 –
“citable and accessible including but not
limited to publications, data sets, software,
patents, and copyrights."

10. From metrics to altmetrics
Measures
Traditional New
Research
Products
Traditional
- Article
- Chapter
- Books
Times Cited
Impact
Factor +
Rank
H-index
Page Views
New
- Datasets
- Blog post
- More
None Downloads
Reblogs

11. Examples of additional scholarly
output/professional contributions
• Blogs
• Invited Interviews
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Datasets
• Patents
• Software
• Copyrights

14. More examples of “altmeasuring”
• Downloads and page views
• Track-backs
• Tweets and retweets
• Links from review services (e.g. Facultyof1000)
• Sharing, social bookmarking

15. Other forces at work
• Increasing requirements for open data
– Foundation funding (e.g. Gates)
– Government funding
• Big data
• Predatory publishing

16. Tools

17. Journal-level tools
• Each publisher does it a slightly different
way

19. BMC Medicine

20. Wiley

21. Circulation (AHA via Highwire)

22. BMC Neuroscience via SpringerLink

23. Early tools for non-traditional products
• Measured web views and downloads
–Google Analytics
–Bit.ly
–Spring Metrics

24. Leading tools for altmetrics
• Evolved to address non-traditional scholarship
as well as traditional “outputs”
– ImpactStory
– Altmetric.com
– PlumX

25. Impactstory
• “Impactstory is a place to learn and share all
the ways your research is making a difference”
• Jason Priem and Heather Piwowar
• Free for 30 days, then $60 a year.

26. Sample Impactstory Profile

27. Profile Metrics

28. Article Details

29. Altmetric.com
• London-based start-up
• Funding from Digital Science (LabGuru, FigShare)

30. Altmetric’s widget (“donut”)
• Used by publishers/journals
– Nature Publishing, Cell Press
– Springer
– BioMed Central
– BMJ Specialty journals

31. Nature Neuroscience

32. Nature Neuroscience

33. Nature Neuroscience

36. Altmetric Explorer
• Subscription product – monitor, search and
measure conversations about your
publications and those of your competitors
• “Pricing options”

37. Altmetric Bookmarklet
• Free
• Reading a paper and want to find out its
Altmetric details? Install the bookmarklet
in your browser
• When viewing the paper, “Altmetric it”

38. Altmetric Bookmarklet

39. Altmetric Bookmarklet

40. Plum Analytics
• Gathers metrics (altmetrics) about research
from more than thirty sources including PLOS,
PubMed and YouTube, and categorizes them
• PlumX is an institutional “impact dashboard”
that provides information on how research
output is being utilized, interacted with, and
talked about around the world.

41. Plum Analytics
• PlumX Metric Categories
– Usage (downloads, views, ILL)
– Captures (favorites, bookmarks)
– Mentions (blog posts, news, Wikipedia)
– Social Media (tweets, likes)
– Citations (PubMed, Scopus, patents)

42. PlumX in Action
• Pitt PlumX “dashboard” https://plu.mx/pitt/g/
• Michael Pinsky, MD https://plu.mx/u/mpinsky

43. PlumX

44. PlumX Author Profile

45. Article View

46. However…

47. • Standards aren’t fully defined
– Definitions, calculations, etc.
– NISO effort
• Are altmetrics important for discovery?
For evaluation? Both?
Issues

48. Issues
• Impact vs. attention
–David C.’s Improbable Science… “Why you
should ignore altmetrics and other
bibliometric nightmares”
http://www.dcscience.net/?p=6369
• Popularity
–Popular topics get higher counts, quickly,
but then fade. How does this reflect
quality?

49. Issues
• Does social media help promote good
science? Or not? (e.g. anti-vaccine)

50. Altmetrics: worth pursuing?
If you think “yes”…

51. What you can do now
• Check what measurements/metrics
are available for your articles
• Consider deposit of your other
“products of research”

52. What you can do now
• Investigate use of free measurement
tools (Altmetric bookmarklet,
ImpactStory profile)
• Set up social media profiles and lurk
• Experiment with low-commitment
activities

53. Example
• Choose a journal/database
• Find one of your articles
• Check the altmetrics
• Go to Twitter
• Search for your discipline/area of research
• See what information has been
shared/who is sharing it

54. Kimberley R. Barker, MLIS
Kimberley@virginia.edu
Andrea H. Denton, MLIS
ash6b@virginia.edu
Questions?