What are Altmetrics?
Altmetrics, or alternative metrics, are new measures that take into account online reader behavior, network interactions with content, and social media. Altmetrics are meant to complement, not replace, traditional impact measures and are measures of online attention and engagement.
Altmetrics measure impact at the article/item level. Examples of Altmetrics include:
- mentions on Facebook, Twitter, or online news sites
- exports to citation management systems like Mendeley or Zotero
- downloads (of full text articles, software, etc.)
- comments in blogs or other online forums
Altmetrics are measures of attention, not quality!
Strengths of Altmetrics
Currency - Altmetrics can be gathered and calculated immediately, compared with traditional citations that accumulate slowly.
Diversity - Altmetrics capture data from a variety of sources, not just the traditional academic publishing setting, and thus may reflect the broader impact of research beyond the scholarly community. Additionally, altmetrics can be captured for research outputs beyond articles, like data sets, software, molecular structures, etc.
How Can I Find Altmetrics?
Many altmetrics are embedded in our databases. Look for links such as "Article Metrics" or "Metrics." For example, Scopus, EBSCOhost databases, EBSCO Discovery Service, ScienceDirect, Engineering Village display PlumX metrics.
Sage, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Nature display Altmetric data. Altmetric collects relevant mentions from social media sites, newspapers, policy documents, blogs, Wikipedia, and many other sources. To help you put the data in context, Altmetric gives the output an Altmetric Attention Score indicating the level of online attention the item has received.The scoring algorithm takes various factors into account, such as the relative reach of the different sources of attention :
ImpactStory collects and aggregates data from multiple sources across the web to produce a single impact report. Sources include Facebook, PLoS, SlideShare, Topsy (for tweets), Mendeley, delicious, CiteULike, Scopus, Wikipedia, and PubMed. 
Publications about new metrics
- Article-Level Metrics (ALMs): measuring the impact of researchThese site includes videos, presentations, and news.
- Altmetrics: Value all research productsWhat a difference a word makes. For all new grant applications from 14 January, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) asks a principal investigator to list his or her research “products” rather than “publications” in the biographical sketch section.
- The Altmetrics CollectionWhat paper should I read next? Who should I talk to at a conference? Which research group should get this grant? Researchers and funders alike must make daily judgments on how to best spend their limited time and money–judgments that are becoming increasingly difficult as the volume of scholarly communication increases.
- Alternative Research MetricsMost scientific researchers know the agony of waiting to hear about the status of a submitted manuscript. They are eager to change the phrase "manuscript submitted" on a grant application or curriculum vitae to "in press" in advance of some crucial deadline. Publications in prestigious journals—not necessarily the articles themselves but the fact of their existence—are the established and universal, albeit imperfect, way of claiming credit for the scientific work you've done, and there's always a delay.
Others
- EigenfactorThe citation data used at Eigenfactor come from Thomson Scientific's Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The JCR provides detailed information about the nearly 7,000 journals in the sciences and social sciences which are indexed in Thomson's Web of Science citation database. Journals in the sciences and social sciences. In addition, Eigenfator is able to assign Eigenfactor scores to more than 100,000 reference items that are cited by the JCR-listed journals.
- H-indexThe h-index factor is based on the depth of years of your product subscription and your selected timespan. Items that do not appear on the Results page will not be factored into the calculation.
- SJRThe SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains.