Open AccessWhat are Altmetrics and why would anyone be interested?
Author(s) -
Watson Roger
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
nursing open
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.55
H-Index - 12
ISSN - 2054-1058
DOI - 10.1002/nop2.55
Subject(s) - altmetrics , publication , social media , point (geometry) , computer science , world wide web , internet privacy , advertising , mathematics , business , geometry
Go to the landing page of Nursing Open and click on an issue and then on an article and above the tabs that take you to the content of the article you will see a coloured indicator labelled ‘AM score’ and, in some cases, a number next to it. That number is the Altmetric® score; Altmetrics being a contraction of ‘alternative metrics’. This score indicates the extent to which the article has received attention on social media sites, such as Twitter® and on blogs. If you hover over the ‘AM score’, you will get information such as the number of times the link to the article has been mentioned on, for example, Twitter® or Facebook®. If you click on the indicator, then you will open up a more detailed webpage showing a map of the World and the countries where the mentions came from filled in and also the demographic breakdown of those mentioning the article. You may be puzzled about why, sometimes, the number of mentions does not equal the score which may be lower or higher than the number of mentions. This is because Altmetric® scores are weighted. For example, a mention on a blog is worth five points compared with a mention on Twitter®, which is worth one point. Some mentions are worth less than 1, for example, YouTube® and LinkedIn®.