University Library: Research: Alternative measures

Why consider?

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:

where citation databases do not provide coverage of a discipline
in assessing the impact of research output which does not take the form of journal articles or books
where impact in non-scholarly environments is significant
in determining how research is being implemented in practice
in uncovering the impact of very recently published work

Altmetrics —short for alternative metrics—is a measure of web-based scholarly interaction.

Altmetrics are generally article-level metrics based on metrics from the social web for analysing and informing scholarship. Altmetrics measure the number of times a research output gets cited, tweeted about, liked, shared, bookmarked, viewed, downloaded, mentioned, favourited, reviewed, or discussed. Its development can be seen as a response to the impact of social networking on the research environment. It harvests these numbers from a wide variety of open source web services that count such instances, including open access journal platforms, scholarly citation databases, web-based research sharing services, and social media. For example:

viewed: HTML views or PDF downloads of articles and papers, such as in PLOS One
cited: used in mashups, forked on GitHub, cited in CrossRef or by Wikipedia
saved: by scholars in Mendeley or Zotero; bookmarked in Diigo
discussed: Twitter, ResearchBlogging, NatureBlogs
recommenced: liked in Facebook or LinkedIn, reviewed positively in a journal or by an expert
online attention: aggregation of mentions and number of sources.

Plum X Metrics

PlumX Metrics are available in Scopus, and used within the Notre Dame research repository, ResearchOnline@ND. They are intended to "provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment. Examples include research being mentioned in the news or included in a policy citation" (PlumX Metrics, 2025). Research metrics are distributed between the five categories of citations, usage, captures, mentions and social media.

Downloads, page views

Article PDF download or article view data can indicate interest or popularity. Tools that provide download information might be databases, repositories or a journal's website and include ResearchOnline@ND and PLOS journals.

Benefits of altmetrics

Immediate response to output – did you know that a research output is mentioned online every 1.8 seconds?
Gather evidence of interest and engagement with the public, broader society.
Interest outside of formal publishing.
Altmetrics aggregators provide contextual information about online attention.
Altmetrics can improve the visibility of your work and your research profile.

Limitations of altmetrics

Acceptance amongst members of the academic community is split and its use can be controversial.
Measures attention not quality.
Misuse of metrics has been raised as a concern by some.
The value of metrics generated varies and is dependent on the user groups, measures, and fields of research.

Social networking sites can be useful for tracking authors and their research and can function as hubs of online scholarly interaction.

You can:

See analytics on your profile and papers
Get connected and stay in touch with your scholarly community
Follow other people in your field
Share your papers
Ask for advice
Receive alerts about publications, events and/or jobs

Below are some of the most widely used scholarly networking tools:

Research

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