Measuring Your Research Impact

1. A clearer understanding of impact, showing which scholarly work are read, discussed, saved and suggested, as well as cited.
2. It offers more current data, viewing impact of it in days, instead of years.
3. Keep track on the impact of online scholarly products like datasets, software, blog posts and videos.
4. It shows the impacts on diverse audiences, from scholars to practitioners, clinicians, educators and the general public.

[Taken from: Altmetrics: What, Why and Where?]

Altmetric tools allow researchers to collect and share the broad impact of their research. Below are some of the more popular tools:

• Altmetric.com - offers a service called the Altmetric score, which is a single-number summary of the attention an article has received online.  Sources tracked include social and traditional media, comments on publications from peer-review websites, reference managers like Mendeley as well as public policy documents.
• Impact Story - allows researchers to create an online profile that gathers usage data from the many online research-sharing platforms such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Vimeo, Slideshare, Scopus, PubMed, PLoS, Mendeley, Figshare, Dryad, Delicious, CiteULike, Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Profile data can be exported for further analysis, and users can receive alerts about new impacts.
• Plum Analytics - offers unique metrics such as WorldCat holdings and downloads and pageviews from some publishers, institutional repositories and EBSCO databases. The service is available via a subscription. There is a free demo version available.

There is an association between altmetrics and open access, as data comes from open sources. Altmetrics can be embedded into institutional repositories or third-party systems. Open access research outputs are promoted via social web applications and has higher visibility and accessibility than those published within subscription-based journals. This may increase the level of engagement by the public.