Research Impact Metrics

A guide for those wanting to use research impact metrics for evaluation, analytics, and reviews, e.g., promotion & tenure.

Search across Authors, Research Groups, Departments, & Institutions

Altmetric Explorer for Institutions
Altmetric Explorer for Institutions is an intuitive, web-based platform that enables users to search, monitor, and measure altmetrics: mentions and conversations surrounding the research outputs of specific authors, research groups, departments, and institutions.
In today’s digital environment research is often shared and discussed immediately upon online publication -- among other scholars, and by journalists, clinicians, educators, policy-makers, and more. Long before citations start to accrue, research outputs may appear in curricula, influence municipal or legislative decisions, lead to changes in technology or practice, or affect public opinion. Altmetric data provides evidence of these research impacts, and can support individuals and institutions in a number of key areas, such as: helping to inform decisions around where to publish and with whom to collaborate; assisting in research evaluation; bolstering communications and outreach efforts; and uncovering timely conversations to help predict the direction of research itself.

Use Altmetrics to Track Attention to Individual Research Outputs

Altmetric
Company focusing on providing tools and source data for alternative metrics, or altmetrics using their scope definition of this term.
Altmetric Bookmarklet
Want to find out the Altmetric details for a research article or other output? Install the free bookmarklet for Chrome, Firefox and Safari to view the online shares and mentions of an article with a single click.

Using Altmetric Data Responsibly: A Guide to Interpretation and Good Practice
This guide focuses specifically on data from the data provider and company, Altmetric, but other types of altmetrics are mentioned and occasionally used as a comparison in this guide, such as the Open Syllabus database to find the educational engagement with scholarly outputs.
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This guide opens with an introduction followed by an overview of Altmetric and the Altmetric Attention Score, Altmetrics and Responsible Research Assessment, Output Types Tracked by Altmetric, and the Altmetric Sources of Attention, which include: News and Mainstream Media, Social Media (X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, and historical data from Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Sina Weibo); Patents, Peer Review, Syllabi (historical data only), Multimedia, Public Policy Documents, Wikipedia, Research Highlights, Reference Managers, and Blogs; finally, there is a conclusion, a list of related resources and readings, two appendices, and references. This guide is intended for use by librarians, practitioners, funders, and other users of Altmetric data or those who are interested in incorporating altmetrics into their bibliometric practice and/or research analytics. It can also help researchers who are going up for annual evaluations and promotion and tenure reviews, who can use the data in informed and practical applications. It can also be a useful reference guide for research managers and university administrators who want to understand the broader online engagement with research publications beyond traditional scholarly citations, also known as bibliometrics, but who also want to avoid misusing, misinterpreting, or abusing Altmetric data when making decisions, creating policies, and evaluating faculty members and researchers at their institutions.

Last Updated: Jan 12, 2024 5:14 PM
URL: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/research-metrics
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Subjects: General interest

Tags: altmetrics, bibliometrics, research assessment, research evaluation, research impact