Altmetrics is poised to replace the old models of assessing scholarly impact and quality, namely peer review, journal impact factors, and citation statistics.

Read more about altmetrics:

• Altmetrics Manifesto “No one can read everything.  We rely on filters to make sense of the scholarly literature, but the narrow, traditional filters are being swamped. However, the growth of new, online scholarly tools allows us to make new filters; these altmetrics reflect the broad, rapid impact of scholarship in this burgeoning ecosystem. We call for more tools and research based on altmetrics.”

• Jason Priem speaks often on altmetrics.  His presentations are on his Web site.

• What is PLoS doing: Presentation sponsored by SPARC: On April 12, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS One, gave an in-depth look at the the current status of Article Level Metrics, a discussion of what has been learned to date, and a glimpse into what is on the horizon for their further development and wider adoption.
• What BioMed Central is doing, from the BMC Blog.

• More on PloS Article Level Metrics at http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/

• Library Journal article on altmetrics from May 31, 2012.

• LibGuide on research metrics from U. Saskatchewan
• Scholarometer from Indiana a related effort
• PLOSOne article from 2013:  “Do Altmetrics Work?”

Problems with journal impact factors and citation statistics:

• May 2013 Chronicle:  Researchers push back against the Impact Factor 
• Video recording of Eugene Garfield, inventor of the impact factor, at UTK in 2011. In this lecture, Dr. Garfield mentions that the impact factor was never meant to be used the way it is currently used to assess scholarly impact.

• IMU report “Citation Statistics: numbers with a number of problems”

Please feel free to call on our new Associate Dean Holly Mercer (Scholarly Communication, hollymercer at utk dot edu).  She is available to meet with individuals or groups to discuss altmetrics and research analytics.

Holly can help faculty and administrators figure out: What is the need? Faculty evaluation? Funding opportunities? Collaborators? A unified presentation of research output?

What tools, both commercial (SciVal, Scopus) and Open Source, are out there?