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Faculty Expertise, Profiles & Metrics

Showcasing UMSL Faculty works online

Definition

Altmetrics are metrics for social media mentions and uses of scholarly output.  This data can be useful for monitoring your personal impact with other scholars, practitioners, policy makers and the public.

For a good overview read the following article: 
Rise of 'Altmetrics' Revives Questions About How to Measure Impact of Research Chronicle of Higher Education (June 3, 2013)

Advantages

  • Altmetrics accumulate faster compared to traditional citation counts
  • Altmetrics can be expanded beyond books and articles to include software, videos, presentations, posters and more
  • Altmetrics provide a broader measurement for impact of research which is something funders and university administrators are starting to note
  • Altmetrics can be used to augment traditional metrics

Limitations

  • Almetrics are attention indicators that may not be measuring scholarly quality or impact
  • Altmetrics can be easily distorted or misinterpreted

Altmetrics and Citation Rates

Researchers have found a link between scientists' public engagement and citation rates.  See Building Buzz (Scientists) Communicating Science in New Media Environments published in Journalism & Mass Communications Quarterly (2014) for details.

Examples

  • Discussion--Twitter, Facebook, blogs
  • News--News outlets, newspapers, wire services
  • Shares--Twitter, Facebook
  • Views and downloads- publisher website, repositories
  • Ratings--Amazon.com, Speaker Deck
  • Likes/dislikes--Youtube, Slideshare
  • Holdings--Worldcat (number of libraries worldwide which own a particular book)

Using Altmetrics

Scopus for Altmetrics

Plum Analytics displays in the sidebar of journal article and abstract pages in the database Scopus.

It only appears in the sidebar when there is data available for the article that you're currently viewing.

  • Add a plug-in to also view data from Altmetric while in Scopus

 

Plum Analytics Tool for article metrics

To look up metrics compiled by Plum Analytics for a specific article:

Paste the article DOI at the end of this prefix: https://plu.mx/a/?doi=

Example:  https://plu.mx/a/?doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32252-3

 

Altmetric Bookmarklet

Tool for viewing altmetric data from selected publisher websites such as Nature, Springer, Elsevier and Cambridge.

  • Download from Almetric.com.

  • Available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

  • Add bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar.
  • Provides altmetric data for articles with a single click.
  • Bookmarklet only works on PubMed, arXiv or pages containing a DOI including publisher sites like Nature, Springer and selected Elsevier journal titles.

Information provided by Altmetrics bookmarklet

IEE Explore

Usage data and Altmetric badges are available in IEEE Xplore.

Publisher Sites

Publishers are starting to incorporate usage data into their journal sites.
Examples: