Altmetrics

Services offering alternative metrics include:

Altmetrics, or alternative metrics, provide metrics beyond traditional citations. The provide an additional way to look at an article's impact beyond traditional measures such as citation counts, cited reference counts, journal prestige (Journal CiteScores, Scimago Journal Rank, or Journal Impact Factors), or author H-index.

Altmetrics may provide earlier evidence of an article's impact ahead of traditional citation methods since they are not dependent on the publication timelines.

These measures are said to be

• Easier to make
• Can be done faster than is possible in the citation cycle 
• Would be quantitative and objective gauges of the activity surrounding the appearance of a report
• And by implication, would help clarify, and even rank the 'impact' of an article

• Altmetrics can show online use of articles based on usage on the publisher site and mentions on social media

These measures include counting how often an item is:

• Viewed by visitors
• Downloaded or printed
• Bookmarked or saved to citation managers like Mendeley, Zotero, etc.
• Mentioned in Blog commentaries
• Shared on social media like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, etc.
• Considered in email forums or discussion groups

Considerations Surrounding Altmetrics:

• Lack of a standard definition
• Lack of data normalization
  sources of altmetrics are not comparable between providers because data may be collected differently
• Time dependent
  Older works will likely not have as many altmetrics as newer works. The lifespan of use is unknown.
• Tracking issues
  DOIs help with tracking but not all providers provide consistent tracking for items without DOIs.

Using Altmetrics:

Altmetrics can help provide a narrative and context around your work. You can show usage beyond traditional citations and perhaps its reach beyond the scholarly community. 

Altmetrics by Selected Publication Type

Learn more about Altmetrics:

Scopus provides PlumX metrics for articles.

1. From Scopus search results, click on an article title.
2. Below the citation and author information, click "View all metrics".
3. If PlumX metrics are available, they will be listed below the Scopus metrics. 
4. Click "View PlumX details" to see more information about the PlumX metrics listed on the record.

UTMB provides Research Expert Profiles. Publications, also referred to as "Research Output", will include PlumX and the Altmetric "donut", when available.

Example: