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It began with a discussion amongst academics on social media around the desire for research impact to focus more on article level metrics and the multitude of ways articles were being shared and viewed in addition to citation counts.
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The increasing interest in the potential use of altmetrics and the changing nature of digital research and the tools being used to share and engage has provided the push to ensure that the same issues that often surround the transparency of traditional metrics are not repeated. NISO (National Information Standards Organization) recently undertook an initiative to provide an agreed definition, standards and best practice guidelines for the use of these new emerging metrics. Working groups consisted of a number of international universities, research institutes, academic publishers, libraries and altmetrics tracking services.
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Altmetrics are part of a wider conversation around the use of measures to try and capture the potential impact of research within academia and beyond, including bibliometrics and other indicators such as teaching activities, enhancements to curriculum, awards etc.
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Complementary Score is an indicator and the underlying, |
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| Track attention across scholarly outputs across peer reviews, news, Wikipedia citations, policy documents, research blogs, bookmarks on reference managers like Mendeley, and mentions on Twitter. image: Andy Tattersall |
Research disciplines that produce more diverse research ouputs and those that are slow to produce citation counts can use altmetrics as a way to ensure these outputs are included in showcasing evidence of potential impact. For all disciplines altmetrics provide a way to view the societal and economic use of research that may have not have been visible before such as in grey literature like policy papers and clinical guidelines etc.
They are not meant as an alternative to existing traditional indicators like the h-index but to be used in addition to these metrics.
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The term altmetrics, a shortening