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PolyU Library

Altmetrics

What are Altmetrics and how does it measure your research impact?

Major Altmetrics Tools

About Altmetric.com

  • One of the major providers of altmetrics data.
  • Subscription based, PolyU library does not have an institutional subscription.
  • Free for researchers to use Altmetric Bookmarklet
  • Altmetric data is provided for articles only with Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

Altmetric Donut

  • The altmetric score is presented as a Altmetric donut where the colors represent the different sources of attention. It collates the online mentions and shares of a research work across a variety of sources into one score. Read The Colours of the Donut for more information.
            Altmetric donut colors​
     
  • Original comments can also be tracked by clicking the donut.
  • For altmetrics collected from Twitter and Mendeley, the score comes with data on demographics, such as geographical breakdown of the locations of the people.

Altmetric Bookmarklet (Free)

  • Free tool offered by Altmetric.com. The bookmarklet lets you track altmetric details such as online shares and mentions of a work with a DOI.
  • Watch this tutorial or follow the steps below to install the bookmarklet at your browser to track a research work:

► Step 1. Install the bookmarklet at Altmetric Bookmarklet (it can only be installed in Chrome, Firefox and Safari).

► Step 2. Search an article and click the at your bookmark bar.

► Step 3. If the work has available altmetric data, the bookmarklet will be shown at the top right.

► Step 4. Select “click for more details” to view the score details or subscribe to email alerts notification when the article is shared.

► Step 5. (Optional) If you would like to embed the Altmetric donut at your website, read Embeddable badges for details.

Source of Data

Altmetric collects data from various sources, including:

  • Blogs
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • CiteULike
  • and more….

Read the full list of sources of data at: https://www.altmetric.com/about-our-data/our-sources/

An Example of Altmetric Scores in PIRA

Altmetric data is available for research outputs at PIRA (PolyU Institutional Research Archive) that have online activity. Below is an example of an article from PIRA.

About PlumX Analytics

  • A provider of altmetric data owned by EBSCO.
  • Subscription based, PolyU library does not have an institutional subscription.
  • PlumX does not require a DOI to capture the metrics. It can also capture metrics for URLs. Hence, impact metrics are provided for not only journal articles but for 60 different types of research output such as books, data, figures, manuscript, reports and visual arts. For more details, please refer to Types of research output that PlumX collects.

PlumX Metrics

Unlike the Altmetric donut which has one aggregated score, PlumX metrics are categorized as below:

  • Usage - tracks the downloads and views of research
  • Captures - a leading indicator of citations
  • Mentions - where people are truly engaged with research
  • Social Media - tracks the buzz and attention of research
  • Citations - the traditional measure of research

Source of Data

PlumX Analytics collect data from various sources, including:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • EBSCO , Scopus, PubMed Central, PLOS
  • Delicious
  • Slideshare
  • YouTube and Vimeo, etc.

Read the full list of sources of data at: http://plumanalytics.com/learn/about-metrics/

An Example of Implementing PlumX at Institutional Level

The University of Pittsburgh has embedded the PlumX analysis at their institutional repository. Below is an example of a work that shows PlumX metrics.

 

About Impactstory

  • Another provider of altmetric data.
  • Aims to help researchers share the online impact of their research. It tracks the online sharing of journal articles, data sets, slides and other research outputs.
  • Free personal account can be registered at https://www.impactstory.org/ using a Twitter account.
  • Publications can be added by linking ORCID profile with Impactstory profile. Once the two profiles are linked, changes made on ORCID will get synced over to Impactstory automatically within 24 hours.

Source of Data

Impactstory tracks activities from:

  • Citations in Scopus
  • PDF downloads, or HTML views, from PLoS
  • Full text views and PDF downloads on PubMed Central
  • Articles being added to Mendeley library
  • Tweets and more…

Steps to Create and Share Impactstory Profile

► Step 1. Register a free account at https://www.impactstory.org/ using a Twitter account.

► Step 2. Add publications to your Impactstory profile by linking with your ORCID profile. Once the two profiles are linked, changes made on ORCID will get synced over to Impactstory automatically within 24 hours.

► Step 3. Put the link to your Impactstory profile on your website or blog, and in your email signature.

Visit this blog to know more about how to maximize impact with Impactstory profile.

An Example of Impactstory Profile

Below is the overview page of the Impactstory profile of Ethan White, an Associate Professor from University of Florida.

  • At the top of the profile, open access score is available to show the percentage of publications which is free to read online.
  • The box “Activity” shows the total number of online saves and shares of the author’s publications on Mendeley, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.