In addition to providing information on different types of usage, Altmetrics can help researchers see the impact of nontraditional types of publications. While you may be able to find scholarly citations to your journal articles easily enough, you often can’t do the same for your datasets or software or blog posts. Altmetrics, however, can sometimes fill that information gap.
Of course, altmetrics are still an emerging field, and researchers are still learning how to interpret the information that they provide. As has always been the case with citation metrics, it falls to individual researchers, departments, and academic disciplines to use them appropriately.
Getting Started with Altmetrics:
Deposit your work with OU’s institutional repository, SHAREOK. The Altmetric badge (from Altmetric.com) will automatically be added to each publication’s page.
Create a profile with ImpactStory.
Further Reading:
- The University of Oklahoma Libraries’ Guide to Research Impact
- Metrics describes both traditional metrics and altmetrics in detail.
- Altmetrics: A Manifesto
- Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer
- NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics (Altmetrics) Initiative
By Molly Strothmann, Social & Behavioral Sciences Librarian, University of Oklahoma
