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Evaluating Research Impact Using Altmetrics

Altmetrics and Your Research Impact

Altmetrics data can be useful in enabling you to monitor online conversations about your research via social media channels, early and often and at various stages of the research lifecycle in order to:
 
  • Assess the reach, engagement, and influence of you research outputs, by, for example, incorporating altmetrics in you academic portfolio to complement other accomplishments.
  • Assess the reach, engagement with, and influence of the research outputs of your peers.
  • Discover influential research that is being shared and discussed by others in your field.
  • Identify potential collaborators and connections between research areas and researchers.

What You Can Do

  • Consider publishing in a journal that will provide the maximum exposure  for your work to your intended audience.
  • When deciding where to publish, review the journal's web site to determine whether the publisher provides meaningful qualitative data that may help you assess reach, engagement with, and influence of your work.
  • Where possible, share both your research data and resulting publications and other related outputs, via disciplinary repositories such as ArXiv, PubMed Central (see: Open Access Subject Repositories), or institutional ones e.g. QSpace, Queen's Research Repository. 
  • Spread the word about your research early and often via social media tools like Twitter.
  • Keep track of online conversations about your research to ensure your work has been accurately represented and interpreted by others.
  • Get an ORCID iD and populate your profile with all of your academic and research achievements, ensuring accurate representation and visibility of your complete research profile by others.

Adapted from: Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics Project. A Recommended Practice of the National Information Standards Organization, NISO RP-25-2016.