Altmetrics is the quantitative study of communications about scholarly works from measures other than citations. These measures may include article views and downloads, inclusion in citation managers, references in social media such as Facebook, Twitter and/or blogs, Wikipedia, and the popular press. Numbers of communications indicate the impact of a scholarly work in a discipline. The benefits of altmetrics are 1) the ability to show the impact of a work earlier than the point of citation, and 2) to show activity in disciplines where less citation is done. Currently, altmetrics are not widely accepted as evidence of impact by university promotion and tenure committees, but there are indications that the monopoly of bibilometrics is breaking down. See these links for more details about altmetrics.
- Altmetrics: A Manifesto, 2010 from Altmetrics.org
- Altmetrics: A Practical Guide for Librarians, Researchers and Academics, edited by Tattersall, an online book at UNT Libraries
- The Altmetrics Collection, a collection of research articles and essays about altmetrics from the Public Library of Science
- Altmetric, an almetrics provider
- Metrics Toolkit, a rich resource containing definitions of metric and altmetrics that apply to authors, articles, journals, books and more. Filter by product type, type of impact, or discipline to find the best scholarly metrics for your work. The editorial board consists of librarians and a director at Altmetric.