Is Your Article Making an Impact?

Have you heard of altmetrics? Altmetrics are alternative metrics to traditional citation counts. They strive to measure the impact of a particular article by harnessing the power of the Internet and social media. Altmetrics gather data on an individual article from news stories, blog posts, tweets, Facebook or Google + mentions, social bookmarking and saves in collaboration tools like Mendeley or F1000.

If you want to see how altmetrics can work with your published articles, try the free Altmetric bookmarklet. Drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar and click on it when you’re in the abstract or full-text of a paper. Data on the article will appear in a small box in the upper right of your screen. Watch a short 40-second video that demonstrates the bookmarklet.

Many publishers are now offering some altmetric data on their websites, so keep an eye out for those as well. No one is suggesting these alternative metrics will replace the traditional ones, but it is interesting to see the reach and impact of individual research articles in the wider online world.

Other resources:

• Nature article: “Research impact: Altmetrics make their mark”
• Impact Story – an open-source tool to help researchers build “data-driven stories about their impacts”.  Here is a sample profile.
• Kudos – an open-source tool that “helps researchers and their institutions and funders to maximize the visibility and impact of their published articles.” Watch a two-minute video to see what Kudos can do.