A Brief Introduction to Altmetrics: Compliment or
Replacement?
Zohreh Zahedi
ARMOOK & Shahid Beheshti University Webinar12th March 2014
Outline
• Introduction to altmetrics
• Tools and data sources for altmetrics
• Some possibilities & limitations
• Conclusion
Introduction to AltmetricsWhat is altmetrics?• No clear definition• The term altmetrics was proposed in 2010 as a generalization
of article level metrics (ALM)• refers to the mentions of scientific outputs in ‘social media’
(e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Wikipedia, Mendeley, etc.), news media and also may include usage data (article views, downloads)
http://learnthat.com/
Altmetrics tools and providers
• Mendeley
• Altmetric.com
• PLOS
• Plum Analytics
• Impact Story
4
5
How many papers have altmetrics?• Zahedi, Costas &
Wouters (2013)
• Random sample (20,000 pubs) from Web of Science
• Period 2005-2011
• Metrics from ‘Impact Story’
Data Sourcepapers with
metrics%
papers without metrics
%
Mendeley 12380 62.6 7392 37.3
Twitter 324 1.6 19448 98.3
Wikipedia 289 1.4 19483 98.6
Delicious 72 .3 19700 99.7
Pros & Cons
• Fast: shows real time impact • Expand the concept of impact • Could Complement bibliometric indicators
• No clear meaning• Manipulable• No normalization of indicators
Conclusions
• Conceptualization of the new altmetrics needed• Standardization of tools and data needed• Lots of research needed
