Alternative article-level metrics: The use of alternative metrics in research evaluation.

Abstract

EMBO Reports (2018)e47260 Over the past few years, a new group of metrics, known as alternative metrics or altmetrics, has become the topic of interest and research in scientometrics. The name indicates that it begs to differ from classical bibliometrics by providing an alternative to citation analysis. “Altmetrics” itself was first proposed by Jason Priem on Twitter in 2010. Priem and his co‐authors then published the Altmetrics Manifesto in which they explain what altmetrics involves, how it can be used and what subjects it should focus on (http://altmetrics.org/manifesto). It also proposes studies to establish whether alternative metrics do measure the impact and influence of specific research or just represent background noise. To this end, the authors suggest that one could correlate various alternative metrics with traditional metrics, such as citations, or analyse their correlation with expert opinions. In addition, the manifesto addresses a major drawback of altmetrics, namely the susceptibility to manipulation; for instance, the difference between a good or bad indicator value based on Twitter often comes down to just a few tweets. Based on the initial Manifesto, Bornmann and Haunschild discussed principles to guide research evaluation [1]. Bibliometrics use citations from academic papers, which gauges the influence of specific articles on other scientific publications. In contrast, altmetrics use various other media to assess the impact of scientific publications. In essence, they involve counting references on social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, as well as news forums, blogs, online reference managers such as Mendeley and CiteULike, policy‐related documents (such as IPCC and WHO reports), and Wikipedia. In addition, altmetrics also measure views and downloads of scientific publications, along with reviews and recommendations of specific publications (such as F1000Prime, PubPeer and Publons). Views and downloads of publications have been used as an alternative to …