Alternative measures can be used to compensate for some of the limitations of traditional research metrics and to present a more well-rounded picture of research impact. They should be used as a supplement to traditional metrics.
Alternative measures can assist:
Altmetrics —short for alternative metrics—is a measure of web-based scholarly interaction. It aims to measure how often research is tweeted, blogged about, downloaded or bookmarked. Its development can be seen as a response to the impact of social networking on the research environment.
See the Altmetrics manifesto, posted on altmetrics.org, for further explanation about the development of this approach to measuring scholarly impact.
Sites for Calculating Altmetrics
Impact Story - allows the user to create an online profile that gathers usage data from the many online research-sharing platforms like those mentioned above
Altmetric for Scopus - a free application that runs within the sidebar of Scopus article and abstract pages. More information, and a guide to interpreting the data retrieved by the app, is available from the Altmetric for Scopus help page.
Altmetrics and ORCID - enter in the ORCID of any researcher and retrieve all Altmetric data including a breakdown by mentions.
Find futher tools on the Altmetrics.org Tools page
Social networking sites can be useful for tracking authors and their research and can function as hubs of online scholarly interaction.
You can:
Below are some of the most widely used scholarly networking tools: