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Research Assessment and Impact

This guide provides information about crafting impact statements and using metrics or other evidence to showcase research performance.

About alternative metrics

Benefits

  • measures impact with and beyond traditional scholarly citation and journal metrics:
    • engagement with traditional scholarly communications, e.g., article views and downloads
    • engagement with non-traditional sources, e.g., datasets, programming codes, poster presentations, software, performances, exhibitions, public lectures
    • engagement outside of the traditional research environment, e.g., open days, festival panels
  • are generated quickly
  • promotes sharing.

Considerations

  • lack of acceptance and standardisation across disciplines, platforms, countries, etc.
  • time-consuming to gather manually
  • can be manipulated.

Alternative metric examples

  • shares on social media: X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok
  • shares on professional or research networks: Mendeley, LinkedIn, SSRN, ResearchGate
  • use: downloads, links, captures, bookmarks, favourites, likes, shares, views
  • mass media mentions: news reports, Wikipedia mentions, policy documents
  • reuse: adaptions, derivatives, forks
  • followers: subscribers, watchers, readers
  • attendance: door counts, online registrations
  • holdings: book sales, library holdings, views
  • recognition: ratings, reviews, discussion/comment, invitations, awards.

Tracking with Altmetrics

Where available, alternative metrics are tracked through identifiers such as DOIs and ISBNs. Always share outputs using these links or share from the output's original webpage/post.

How to ensure online attention is tracked by Altmetric. Share your research with an identifier like DOIs and ISBNs.

Alternative metric sources

Aggregator examples

There are a number of alternative metric products available that track and collate alternative metrics such as social media and mass media mentions, shares, likes etc.

Other data sources

Check your platforms (or where you have a presence online) and find out what statistics they offer.

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