Article-Level Metrics, Citation Metrics, Altmetrics, Bibliometrics… What Does it all Mean?

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When it comes to measuring the impact, influence, or relevance of a given article, many researchers look to the metrics surrounding that publication. Metrics, in this case, refers to the number of times a paper has been cited by other investigators (AKA – cited references). Another way to gauge the impact of a paper is via Altmetrics, a relatively new way of examining the social media coverage and lay press surrounding published research. Both modes of evaluating article-level metric information is acceptable, each with their own benefits and shortcomings. Discovering metrics about an article is commonly referred to by the umbrella term known as bibliometrics. Follow the steps below for some hands-on experience with each of these citation metric methods and try incorporating them into your research workflow!

Adding the Altmetric Bookmarlet to your browser…

  1. Go to the Altmetric Bookmarklet page (available for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox)
  2. Drag and Drop the “Altmetric It!” button to your browser’s bookmarks bar
  3. Go to the MSK Library homepage >> click the PubMed tab >> type the following into the main search box: altmetrics AND method  >> click SEARCH
  4. Click the 3rd article on the list entitled “Using Social Media to Share Your Radiology Research: How Effective Is a Blog Post?“
  5. Click the newly added “Almetric It!” button in your browser’s bookmarks bar to see the altmetric score (and other specifics) about the chosen article

Finding cited references using Scopus…

  1. Go to the MSK Library homepage >> click the Scopus link below the search box >> type the following into the Scopus search box: altmetrics AND method  >> click the green magnifying glass to search
  2. Click the 8th article on the list entitled “Using Social Media to Share Your Radiology Research: How Effective Is a Blog Post?“
  3. Look to the right-hand side of the page to see how many times the article has been cited and by whom

Notice the difference in the two methods? Scopus tells us the article has been cited by another scholarly research paper one time while Altmetric tells us that the article has been blogged about once, tweeted about 128 times, posted to two Facebook pages, and mentioned by one person on Google+. So, how would you measure the overall impact/influence of the research paper we just investigated?

To discuss further or to learn more about altmetrics/cited reference searching, just ASK US.