Altmetrics

Altmetrics or alternative metrics measure online social engagement with research outputs. They differ from the traditional metrics which are citation counts, impact factor and h-indices. The term altmetric was proposed in 2010 in the article "Altmetrics: a manifesto".  

Altmetrics can be applied to all fields of research. They are not reliant on the citation frequency in a field, and you do not have to wait as long for the work to mature (as with published citations) before seeing the impact.

What Are Altmetrics? is a website where you can learn more.

• The term altmetrics relates to a range of alternative or non-traditional bibliometrics
• Altmetrics encompass different types of measures from counts to field-weighted metrics
• Having a digital object identifier (DOI) and publishing in Open Access venues makes research visible and assists the collation of altmetric data in databases
• Altmetrics can be used to complement traditional citation analysis

Altmetrics are

• quicker to accumulate
• often show a more diverse and multidisciplinary impact
• can be applied to books, presentations, and data instead of being largely limited to journal articles as traditional metrics typically are.
• can be particularly useful to areas of research that do not have high citation counts, as they can help show the societal impact of these areas of research.