Measuring Research Impact

While the h-index, citation counts, and journal impact factors demonstrate the influence of research in academia, another metric, Alternative Metrics or altmetrics for short, provides a way of showing the more immediate impact of work in a social realm. Altmetrics include social media activity, media coverage, and inclusion in policy documents or scholarly commentary, among other types of activity.

Altmetrics are, simply, metrics beyond traditional metrics that can help give a more complete picture of how research is being shared and used. Altmetrics are meant to complement, not replace, traditional metrics.

"Altmetrics" is a general term applied to several different types of metrics, provided by commercial vendors or non-profit third parties. Altmetrics scores are increasingly integrated into major databases, such as ProQuest and EBSCO.

Types of Altmetrics

1. Demonstrate Societal Impact

Altmetrics data can help researchers understand how their research is being interacted with by the public, government, policy makers, and other researchers.​
 

2. Speed and Discoverability

Altmetrics data accumulates faster than traditional metrics. This is helpful in disciplines where citations grow slowly and for new researchers.
 

3. Complements Traditional Metrics

Altmetrics provide different types of data from a wider range of sources than traditional metrics such as the h-index and Impact Factor.
 

4. More Inclusive than Traditional Metrics

Traditional metrics are heavily biased towards journal/monograph publications. Altmetrics can be used for a wide variety of research outputs.

There are 3 main tools that aggregate AltMetrics from a variety of different websites and sources.

Altmetric

Altmetric.com, owned by Digital Science, generates an "Attention Score" for research outputs. Sometimes this score is also called a "donut," due to its distinctive circular shape. The Attention Score is always a whole number that is derived from an automated, weighted algorithm.​

​Altmetric requires a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) to generate an Attention Score.

https://www.amamanualofstyle.com/applib/newsitem/348/explaining-altmetric

To look up an an Altmetric Attention Score, download their free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. You can also find it integrated with products from BioMed Central, EBSCO, and others.

PlumX Metrics

PlumX, owned by Elsevier, collects impact metrics in 5 categories: citations, usage, captures, mentions and social media. 

PlumX metrics are widely integrated into Elsevier products, such as Mendeley and Scopus.

Impactstory

Impactstory is a not-for-profit, web-based service that creates a researcher profile and can be used to track the impact of articles, datasets, posters, slide decks, software products and webpages. The site offers a 30-day free trial and is $60 a year after that. 

Link Impactstory to your Twitter, ORCID or Google Scholar account to quickly import information and populate your profile.

As a new phenomenon, altmetrics are slowly gaining acceptance across institutions as one of the tools to tell your story for tenure and promotion. At UTSA, different departments and individual faculty are starting to explore potential uses for altmetrics.  Check with your department for guidance on best practices.

Below are some examples for how to utilize altmetrics on your CV and in your promotion and tenure dossier.