Article level altmetric data are increasingly being recorded and displayed in peer reviewed journals and subject databases in the science and medicine fields. The range of article level data captured provides extensive details about the dissemination or impact of the scholar’s online published journal article. Here are examples of where you can find altmetric data.
PlumX Metrics in Scopus
The Scopus database uses PlumX metrics from Plum Analytics to provide altmetric information about published scholarly research articles. The five information categories captured in PlumX metrics are citations, captures, mentions, social media and usage.
- Access the Scopus database.
- On the Scopus "start exploring" web page type the journal article title you want to investigate.
- From the search results find and click on the specific journal article title.
- In the journal article record scroll down the page to view the selected metrics information. Next click on "View all metrics" in order to view the traditional Scopus metrics as well as the PlumX metrics.
- Lastly, click on the "View PlumX details" link in order to access the PlumX metrics dashboard. The PlumX metrics dashboard provides more detailed altmetric information.
PLOS Journals
The Public Library of Sciences (PLOS) journals - for example, PLOS One, PLOS Medicine, and PLOS GLOBAL Public Health - are open access journals. Altmetric data is available for every article published in any of the PLOS journals.
- Access the PLOS journal where the journal article you require is published.
- On the PLOS journal main page, e.g. PLOS One, locate the search box and type the name of the article you would like to explore.
- Next on the results web page select the article of interest by clicking on the title.
- The altmetric data will be displayed two ways - summary view and detailed view.
- The summary view is immediately displayed and the data has four categories - save, citation, view and share. Click on each individaul box to learn how the number was calculated.
- To view a more specific breakdown and visualization of the data click on the "Metrics" link.
- The almetric data that appears in the PLOS journals is collected by the company Altmetric.
