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Citation Analysis: Altmetrics

Alternative Metrics:

altmetrics
Altmetrics are a new set of web-based measures proposed as an alternative to the widely used journal impact factor and personal citation indices like the h-index. The term Altmetrics was proposed in 2010, as a generalization of article level metrics. Altmetrics offers a more responsive and wider-ranging layer of quantitative impact measurements in addition to formal scholarly citation measures.
 
This can include:
  • Viewed - HTML views and PDF downloads
  • Discussed - journal comments, science blogs, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and other social media
  • Saved - Mendeley, CiteULike and other social bookmarks
  • Cited - citations in the scholarly literature, tracked by Web of Science, Scopus, CrossRef and others
Recommended Tools:
Delivers metrics based on the Social Web for analysing and informing scholarship.
  1. Add bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar (ideal browsers are Firefox and Chrome)
  2. Visit any paper (requires that the paper has a DOI)
  3. Retrieve metrics with a single click
Is a free tool that brings together a diverse assortment of altmetrics and traditional citation metrics for your research outputs, including both journal articles and datasets (URL-based publishing). Create an account to get started.
 
Challenges of Altmetrics:
  • heavy emphasis on presentational layer
  • accurate interpretation (classification/categorisation) of ever changing metrics 
  • prone to self-citation
  • Altmetrics can be gamed, e.g. likes and mentions can be bought
  • Metrics in themselves do not tell you anything about the quality of the paper
More information: