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Altmetrics

Use Cases for Altmetrics

Many researchers are using altmetrics to help document the varied impacts of their work in their CVs, tenure and promotion dossiers, and grant and job applications. When using altmetrics to document your research’s influence, keep in mind that context, how your paper or other research output has performed relative to others, is very important for making the numbers you list meaningful.

 Tip: Provide Context

Rather than include raw counts of your article's metrics, like this:

Author, A. (2015). "Title." Journal name. doi:10.000/10.100x Citations: 4 / Twitter mentions: 21 / Mendeley bookmarks: 91 / Blog mentions: 12

...it is more effective to provide contextual information that communicates to your viewer how your paper or other research output has performed relative to others' papers/outputs, as in the entry below:

Author, A. (2015). "Title." Journal name. doi:10.000/10.100x Citations: 4 - listed in the 98th percentile of biology research published in 2015 on Impactstory. Other impact metrics: listed on Altmetric.com as being in the 96th percentile of papers published in Journal name and the 87th percentile of papers published in 2015. International impact: this paper has been mentioned, bookmarked, or viewed in at least 43 countries, according to Impactstory.

 Tip: Provide Description

Qualitative data is also a good way to provide context for the attention your work has received. You can find full-text mentions of your work using altmetrics services and include them in your website, CV, or dossier like so:

Author, A. (2015). "Title." Journal name. doi:10.000/10.100x Paper covered by more than 100 media outlets worldwide, including The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. Recommended on 12 research blogs, putting it in the 99th percentile of biology publications published in 2015. Was described as "a breakthrough study on examples" by prominent genetics and evolution researcher Rosie Redfield.