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Open Access Week – Day 5 (Part 2): “Altmetrics”

Posted: October 25th, 2013

“Altmetrics”, or alternative citation metrics, provide researchers and scholars with new ways to track influence across evolving modes of scholarly communication. In “The Altmetrics Collection,” Jason Priem, Paul Groth, and Dario Taraborelli define altmetrics as follows:

Altmetrics is the study and use of scholarly impact measures based on activity in online tools and environments. The term has also been used to describe the metrics themselves—one could propose in plural a “set of new altmetrics.” Altmetrics is in most cases a subset of both scientometrics and webometrics; it is a subset of the latter in that it focuses more narrowly on scholarly influence as measured in online tools and environments, rather than on the Web more generally.

One example of an altmetrics provider is ImpactStory:

ImpactStory

http://www.impactstory.org/

ImpactStory is an open-source, web-based tool that helps researchers explore and share the diverse impacts of all their research products—from traditional ones like journal articles, to emerging products like blog posts, datasets, and software. Supported by a grant from the Sloan Foundation.

Further Reading:

Bailey, C. (2013). The Altmetrics Bibliography. Digital Scholarship. October 14, 2013.
Accessed October 25, 2013 from http://digital-scholarship.org/alt/altmetrics.htm.

Howard, J. (2013). Rise of ‘Altmetrics’ Revives Questions About How to Measure Impact of Research. The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 3, 2013.
Accessed October 25, 2013 from http://chronicle.com/article/Rise-of-Altmetrics-Revives/139557/

Piwowar, H. (2013). Altmetrics: What, Why and Where?. ASIS&T Bulletin. April/May 2013.
Accessed October 25, 2013 from http://asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-13/AprMay13_Piwowar.html.

Priem, J., Groth, P., Taraborelli, D. (2012), The Altmetrics Collection, PLOS One 7(11): e48753. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048753.
Accessed October 25, 2013 from http://www.ploscollections.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0048753.