What are alternative metrics?
Yesterday, you might have learned about the pros and cons of traditional metrics and how they generally work. Today's challenge focuses on alternative metrics or altmetrics - that is, metrics that track online sources of impact, such as social media mentions, news outlets, blog posts, citation managers, downloads, and more.
Altmetrics can be especially useful for newly published work, early career researchers, and researchers in disciplines that have low citation rates but share their work online. You can view a comparison of different metrics on our Demonstrate Your Impact guide, and check out how altmetrics might help scholars on our Tracking Scholarship in Arts & Humanities guide.
Complete today’s challenge!
To complete today’s challenge, visit the Metrics Toolkit and explore the below listed altmetrics to learn more about how they work and where you can find them.
- Altmetric Attention Score
- Github
- Mendeley Readers and Wikipedia citations
- News and Policy mentions
Bonus challenge
Take it a step further and check out UNLV Libraries Altmetric Explorer pilot, which goes through the end of 2023!
Altmetric Explorer is a tool that tracks altmetrics, using persistent identifiers such as DOIs, ISSNs, and ISBNs, then generates an Altmetric Attention Score reflecting some of the impacts that scholarly work can have online.
To create an account, visit https://www.altmetric.com/explorer and sign in using your UNLV email address.
Explore the tool, and then please give us feedback to tell us if we should continue our subscription!
Events to help with today’s challenge
Using Altmetrics to Show Impact Beyond the Citation
Instructor: Christina Miskey
Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm
Location: Online via Zoom
In this workshop, attendees will discover how alternative metrics, or altmetrics, are used to show the potentially broad reach of published research. Altmetrics can be useful for authors at any career stage and discipline, but are particularly helpful for early career researchers. Included will be a live demonstration of Altmetric Explorer, which is a new tool that allows authors to see their works’ impact.
