What Are Altmetrics?
Altmetrics are new ways of engaging with research output that are published via social media. They do not measure the quality of a journal, but measure how articles and other scholarly outputs have been used in the digital environment. They complement (rather than replace) traditional citation metrics.
Altmetrics measure:
- How much attention the scholarly output has received in social media.
- How widely the scholarship has been disseminated (among other scholars, or in the public arena such as being quoted by journalists).
- Influence and impact of scholarship (e.g. mentions in public policy documents, by experts, etc.).
Examples of metrics used: Views; downloads; bookmarks; citations in Wikipedia; mentions in news articles, public policy documents, or social media, etc.
Advantages
- Provide quicker feedback.
- Not limited to books and articles.
- Cover wider range of metrics.
Disadvantages
- Not as widely accepted (relatively new).
- No standardization.
- Needs to be contextualized (lots of attention does not necessarily mean impact).
- Not everyone is online.
- Much easier to game the system.
