Altmetrics (alternative metrics) are an alternative for or complement to traditional citation impact metrics. Altmetrics especially capture online attention - how has research been shared, discussed and reused online -, for example on X (Twitter), in scholarly blogs or policy documents, in newspapers. The video What are 'altmetrics'? (3.58) gives a brief introduction to the concept of altmetrics.
These altmetrics can be useful to
Be aware: attention can be good, bad or neutral; attention is not impact! See for example this article - it received a lot of online attention, mostly caused by a peer-review or editing mistake in the article. To get a true evidence of impact, you need to dig deeper into the numbers and look at the qualitative data underneath.
Collecting Altmetrics in Altmetrix Explorer
Follow the handout 'Collecting altmetrics in Altmetric Explorer' to collect Altmetric data for (your) publications. Included are questions you can ask yourself while looking at the data.
There are several companies collecting altmetric data, with their own types, definitions and sources. In the chapter 'Suppliers of altmetrics' you can find an overview. The activity in this module is based on Altmetric Explorer, a tool to perform analyses and generate reports for Altmetric attention data. The EUR has licensed Altmetric Explorer.
Several companies collect altmetrics, with their own definitions and sources.
The exact way altmetrics are collected differs per supplier, but in general it works like this:
These more technical aspects are important when you tweet or blog about research. See the Tips and Tricks for examples on how you can do this.
Follow the handout 'Collecting altmetrics in Altmetric Explorer' to collect Altmetric data for (your) publications. Included are questions you can ask yourself while looking at the data.
The Altmetric Explorer lets you perform analyses and generate reports for Altmetric attention data - how have research outputs been shared, discussed and reused online?