Altmetrics (or alternative citation metrics) provide new ways to track scholarly influence across a wide range of media and platforms. This presentation covers altmetric fundamentals, tips on connecting your users with altmetrics, and an overview of newly published research. Presented as part of the NN/LM MAR Boost Box Series; http://nnlm.gov/mar/training/boost_mar2014.pdf

1. Introduction to Altmetrics for
Medical and Special Librarians
Linda M. Galloway, MLIS
Librarian for Biology, Chemistry and Forensics
Bibliographer for the Sciences & Technology
Syracuse University Library, Syracuse, NY
NN/LM MAR Boost Box Series
March 2014

2. About Me…
• Librarian/subject specialist for Biology,
Chemistry & Forensic Science
• Evaluate and select content , help people
access the content they need, teach, create
web content, various librarian duties
• B.S. Chemistry, MSLIS from Syracuse
University
• Bibliographer for Sciences & Technology
• Email: galloway@syr.edu

3. What are Altmetrics??
“the study of scholarly impact measures based
on activity in online tools and environments”
(Priem, Groth, and Taraborelli 2012
citable and accessible products not limited to
publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights (“Grant
Proposal Guide, Chapter II” 2013)

4. Traditional Scholarly Metrics

5. Quantifying Scholarly Output
via Citation Metrics
Number of Publications
Citations to Publications
Relative influence of Publications

6. Traditional Tools
Article Level Metrics
• Citations to an individual article
– Web of Science
– Scopus
– Google Scholar
• h-index
– measures both the productivity and impact of the
published work
– Number of an author’s papers that have been cited at
least h times by other publications

7. Traditional Tools
Journal Level Metrics
• Impact Factor – Journal Citation Reports
– Avg. time articles from a journal (past 2 yrs.) are cited
in past year.
– Web of Science indexed journals & data
• SCImago Journal & Country Rank
– Based on Scopus Data, 1996-
– Uses GooglePage Rank algorithim
– Citable increments include past 3 years
– Open Access
Note: there are other indices and measures available within these resources.

9. What data does a typical
researcher/faculty member need?
# Citable products
# Citations to those products
h-Index
Other measures of success and influence

10. Documents: 30
Citations: 253
H-index: 9
2009-2014, 3/5/2014
Scholarly Metrics as a proxy
for Scholarly Influence…

11. Documents: 72
Citations: 445
H-index: 11
Since 2009, 3/5/2014
Scholarly Metrics as a proxy
for Scholarly Influence…

12. Limitations to Traditional Metrics
• Take a long time to accumulate
• Often behind pay walls
• Measure influence narrowly
• Don’t capture a publication’s impact or
influence in emerging forms of scholarly
communication
• Variability depending on database used to
calculate metrics

13. Altmetrics
Measure diverse impacts from
articles, datasets, blog posts, slide shows, etc.
Beyond citation counts!
Readership
Views
Saves
Downloads
Scholarly (or popular) Buzz

14. What can be measured?
“Evidence of Use” – http://impactstory.org
• # of Tweets
• # of “Saves” in online reference managers
• Scholarly (and popular) blog interest and
activity
• Activity in social networking platforms, tools
• And…

15. Meaningful Interactions
CiteULike
Delicious
F1000
GitHub
Mendeley
SlideShare
Twitter
Zotero
What is tracked??
Discussions
Saves
Citations
Recommendations
Downloads
Copies
Altmetrics measures diverse impacts from
articles, datasets, blog posts, slide shows, etc.

16. Altmetric Tools
track readership & influence
Academia.edu is a platform for academics to
share research papers and interests.
CiteULike permits users to store, organize and
share scholarly papers
F1000 is a subscription-based recommendation
service for curated articles in biology and
medicine.

17. Social networking tools

18. Altmetric Tools
track readership & influence
Google Scholar Citations is a service that allows
authors to track their publications and influence
using Google Scholar metrics.
Mendeley is a free reference manager and social
network that was recently acquired by Elsevier.
Mendeley is described as “one of the world’s largest
crowd-sourced research catalogs”
Zotero is a robust and growing citation
management and sharing resource. Collaborators
can share libraries of references, etc.

20. Make Sense of the Diversity of
Research Outputs
Use an aggregator!
Harvest data
Automatic updates
Showcase scholarly influence

21. Tools to gather data
Commercial
• Altmetric.com –owned by Macmillan Publishers
(also owns the Nature Publishing Group).
“Provides article level metrics for researchers and
publishers”
• Plum Analytics – startup co-founded by former
Summon developers; recently acquired by
EBSCO. Collects article-level data for use by
different constituencies to compare individuals,
departments, universities.

22. Tools to gather data
Commercial
• Mendeley.com – Reference manager, .pdf
organizer & social networking tool for
researchers/authors. Collects & displays
altmetrics. Recently purchased by Elsevier.
“Mendeley Institutional Edition (MIE) is an
analytics tool built on top of Mendeley that helps
librarians, research directors and other admins to
understand the research activity and scholarship
output of their community and to facilitate
collaboration within it (Mendeley.com).”

23. Tools to gather data
Non-profit
• ImpactStory – designed for the individual
researcher, tools to visualize impact of
research products. Helps “researchers to tell
data-driven stories about their impacts”
(ImpactStory, 2014).

25. Images: blog.impactstory.org, chemconnector.com

26. Altmetric.com report linked
from database citation

27. PlumXTM - Library Journal’s Most Ambitious Database of 2013

28. Engaging your users…

29. Engaging Constituents
• Don’t assume anyone knows anything about
altmetrics
• New (tenure track) scholars & clinicians
• Explain limitations of both traditional citation
metrics & altmetrics
• Demonstrate the power of a Google Scholar
Profile, institutional profile, and an
ImpactStory Profile

30. Scholars’ Engagement with Social
Media
• Important to maintain and manage an online
presence
• Outreach to the public – broader impacts
criteria – required by some funding agencies
• Mentions in social media seem to lead to
enhanced use of publications
• Dizzying array of social media tools

31. Strategy for Scientific Social
Networking
Goals
1. Choose one or two primary platforms
– Institutional platform & Google Scholar
2. Accurate attribution of research products
– ORCID and other identifiers
3. Keep profile(s) up to date
4. Regularly monitor scientific social networks
The “best” social network depends on the discipline
and individual preferences.

32. Platforms:
To showcase and highlight research products
Institutional Profiling Service Google Scholar

33. Valid data = Valid metrics
• Accurate attribution is essential!
• Scholarly authors are assigned Scopus Author
Identifiers, Web of Science Researcher
ID’s, etc.
• Scholars can claim and make public their
Google Scholar profile
• Scholars can (and should) register for a unique
ORCID number – can use this identifier when
publishing

34. ORCID
Open Researcher Identifier
Free service that assigns a unique number to
each author and links other identification
schemes.
Encourage researchers to use consistent naming
conventions and register for an ORCID ID!

35. Problem: author disambiguation
John F. Dannenhoffer III
Syracuse University
Joan V. Dannenhoffer
Syracuse University
John F. Dannenhoffer IV
PhD Candidate, University of Michigan
Joanne V. Dannenhoffer
M.D. May 2013
Joanne M. Dannenhoffer
Central Michigan University
(spouses) (siblings)
(siblings)
Databases see all of these
people as:
J Dannenhoffer
JV Dannenhoffer
JF Dannenhoffer
JM Dannenhoffer

36. Keep profiles up-to-date
• Great deal of unpublished work can be
harvested and promoted
• Immediate data can be provided
• Recognize that open profiles are the first
impression of both you and your research

37. What’s new in Altmetrics?
“Altmetrics … give early estimates of
the impact of publications or [to] give
estimates of non-traditional types of
impact “ (Sud, 2014).

38. Published literature increasing
Query: altmetrics or citation metricsQuery: altmetrics OR “citation metrics”
– in Title-Abstract-Keyword

39. Vendors capturing & displaying data

40. New literature

41. Altmetrics: A 21st-century solution to
determining research quality
• Basic overview of altmetrics & citation metrics
• Author provides types of altmetrics and their
correlation to citation counts (via published
articles)
• An article’s DOI can be used on ImpactStory to
discover article’s metrics.
Konkiel, S. (2013). Altmetrics: A 21st-century solution to determining research quality.
Online Searcher, 37(4), 10-15.

42. Evaluating altmetrics
• Altmetrics are important b/c they give early
estimates of an article’s impact.
• Citations from the social web may indicate
value oriented more towards applications
than pure scientific utility.
• Describes statistical methods to evaluate
relationship between altmetrics & established
tools.
Sud, P., & Thelwall, M. (2014). Evaluating altmetrics. Scientometrics, 98(2), 1131-1143.

43. Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in
the bibliometric community
• Reviews current altmetrics literature
• Examined used & coverage of social media in
bibliometricians. (quantitatively analyze academic
literature).
• Makes the argument that “total readership” is
important b/c it reflects pure (non-publishing)
uses of publications – docs applied to daily
work, support teaching, societal effects
Haustein, Stefanie, Isabella Peters, Judit Bar-Ilan, Jason Priem, Hadas Shema, and
Jens Terliesner. "Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric
community." arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.7300 (2013).

44. Do altmetrics correlate with citations? Extensive
comparison of altmetric indicators with citations
from a multidisciplinary perspective
• An extensive article!
• Large study of 718,315 publications from Web
of Science with altmetric indicators provided
by Altmetric.com (excluded Mendeley)
• Used Pearson’s correlation analysis to find
connection between altmetrics &
bibliometrics
Costas, R., Zahedi, Z., & Wouters, P. (2014). Do altmetrics correlate with citations? Extensive
comparison of altmetric indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary perspective. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1401.4321.

45. Do altmetrics correlate with citations? Extensive
comparison of altmetric indicators with citations
from a multidisciplinary perspective
• Altmetric counts are low (15-24%)& not very
frequent in scientific pubs, although presence is
increasing
• Social sciences, humanities, and medical & life
sciences had highest presence of altmetrics
• Found positive weak correlation between
altmetrics & citations – reflecting that altmetrics
do not capture the same concepts of impact
• Altmetrics are valued as a complementary tool of
citation analysis

46. Altmetrics & Researchers
Metrics and their relationship to social media:
• Add value to traditionally published content
– Crowdsourced peer review
– Expose questions and comments
– Enhance worth
• Increase readership
• Appear to follow the pattern of traditional
metrics

47. Thank you!!
Linda Galloway
Contributors:
Janet Pease
Anne Rauh
Syracuse University Library

48. References
Adie, Euan, and William Roe. 2013. “Altmetric: Enriching Scholarly Content with Article-level Discussion and Metrics.” Learned Publishing 26: 11–17.
doi:10.1087/20130103.
Arslan, E., Akyokus, S., & Ganiz, M. C. (2013). An application of community discovery in academical social networks. In 2013 IEEE International Symposium
on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (INISTA) (pp. 1–5). doi:10.1109/INISTA.2013.6577650
Bik, Holly M., and Miriam C. Goldstein. 2013. “An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists.” PLoS Biol 11: e1001535. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535.
Bushman, Mike, and Andrea Michalek. 2013. “Are Alternative Metrics Still Alternative?” ASIS&T Bulletin (May). http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-
13/AprMay13_Buschman_Michalek.pdf.
Cameron, Brian D. 2005. “Trends in the Usage of ISI Bibliometric Data: Uses, Abuses, and Implications.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 5 (1): 105–125.
doi:10.1353/pla.2005.0003.
CiteULike. 2013. “Frequently Asked Questions.” Accessed April 29. http://www.citeulike.org/faq/faq.adp.
Costas, R., Zahedi, Z., & Wouters, P. (2014). Do altmetrics correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of altmetric indicators with citations from a
multidisciplinary perspective. arXiv:1401.4321 [cs]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4321
Eysenbach, G. 2011. “Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact.”
Journal of Medical Internet Research 13: e123.
Faculty of 1000. 2013. “About.” Accessed April 29. http://f1000.com/.
Fenner, M. (2013). What Can Article-Level Metrics Do for You? PLoS Biol, 11(10), e1001687. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001687
Gonzalez-Pereira, Borja, Vicente Guerrero-Bote, and Felix Moya-Anegon. 2009. “The SJR Indicator: A New Indicator of Journals’ Scientific Prestige.”
arXiv:0912.4141. http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4141.
Haustein, S., Peters, I., Bar-Ilan, J., Priem, J., Shema, H., & Terliesner, J. (2013). Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community.
Scientometrics, 1–19. doi:10.1007/s11192-013-1221-3
Haustein, S., Peters, I., Sugimoto, C. R., Thelwall, M., & Larivière, V. (2013). Tweeting biomedicine: An analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical
literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, doi:10.1002/asi.23101
Hirsch, J. E. 2005. “An Index to Quantify an Individual’s Scientific Research Output.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America 102: 16569–16572. doi:10.1073/pnas.0507655102.

49. References
Jacso, Peter. 2006. “Deflated, Inflated and Phantom Citation Counts.” Online Information Review 30: 297–309.
doi:http://dx.doi.org.libezproxy2.syr.edu/10.1108/14684520610675816.
Kaur, J., Radicchi, F., & Menczer, F. (2013). Universality of scholarly impact metrics. Journal of Informetrics, 7(4), 924–932. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2013.09.002
Konkiel, S. (2013). Altmetrics: A 21st Century Solution to Determining Research Quality. Retrieved from
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/17147
Mendeley Ltd. 2012. “Mendeley.” http://www.mendeley.com/.
ORCID Inc. 2012. “ORCID.” http://about.orcid.org/.
Piwowar, Heather. 2013. “Altmetrics: Value All Research Products.” Nature 493: 159–159. doi:10.1038/493159a.
PLOS Biology: What Can Article-Level Metrics Do for You? (2013). Retrieved February 10, 2014, from
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001687
Priem, Jason. 2013. “Scholarship: Beyond the Paper.” Nature 495: 437–440. doi:10.1038/495437a.
Priem, Jason, and Heather A. Piwowar. 2013. “ImpactStory: Tell the Full Story of Your Research Impact.” Accessed April 9. http://www.impactstory.org/.
Priem, Jason, Dario Taraborelli, Paul Groth, and Neylon, Cameron. 2010. “Altmetrics: a Manifesto – Altmetrics.org.” Altmetrics: a Manifesto. 26.
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/.
SCImago. 2007. “SJR - Scimago Journal & Country Rank.” http://www.scimagojr.com/.
Shuai, Xin, Alberto Pepe, and Johan Bollen. 2012. “How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter
Mentions, and Citations.” arXiv:1202.2461. http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.2461.
Sud, P., & Thelwall, M. (2014). Evaluating altmetrics. Scientometrics, 98(2), 1131–1143. doi:10.1007/s11192-013-1117-2
Thomson Reuters. 2012. “Journal Citation Reports Help.” http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/JCR/help/h_toc.htm.