There are several ways to engage with research outside of traditional metrics. Alternative measures complement citation-based metrics to help build a more complete picture of the impact of your research. They can be particularly helpful for recent publications or disciplines in the humanities and social sciences where traditional metrics may not be available.
Alternative metrics indicate how a research output has been shared, mentioned, or downloaded from online sources such as social media sites, blogs, mainstream media, and reference managers. This data starts accumulating as soon as your research output is published, providing a measure of the engagement, and attention, with your research sooner than traditional metrics.
Key alternative metrics sources include:
If your research output is available for download in UOW’s open access repository, Research Online, use the author dashboard to find download statistics, including location and institution, referrer URL readership maps and some alternative metrics from PlumX and Altmetric.
This video (5:16) can show you how to navigate the dashboard to retrieve these metrics on your research outputs:
Video transcript: UOW Research Online article metrics
Hello, I'm going to guide you through the author dashboard of Research Online, UOW's institutional repository. This will allow you to check the downloads of your works that are available here as full-text articles or research outputs. Starting from the Research Online homepage, at the top right corner, click on "My Account." This will take you to the login screen. If you haven't previously logged into Research Online, you'll need to sign up for an account. Once you receive the email in your inbox, follow the instructions to activate your account and log in. If you've used Research Online before, you can log in directly. For this demonstration, I'm using the login of my colleague, Renee, who has kindly provided her credentials. Renee has papers in the repository, so we can examine some metrics for her works. Let's log in as Renee.
Now, Renee has greater access to the repository than you would. Your dashboard or login screen will look a bit different. Look for the "Author Dashboard" link under the "Dashboard Tools." Once you've found it, click on "Author Dashboard" to access alternative metrics.
On the first part of the screen, you'll see a world map showing the number of times these works have been downloaded and the regions from which they've been downloaded. To see the total downloads for all your papers in Research Online, change the date in the top right dropdown to "All Time." By default, it's set to May 2019, presumably when Renee added her first full-text paper to Research Online. You'll also find information about the institutions using or downloading your work. Many individuals from the University of Wollongong, for example, are utilising Renee's work. This information could be meaningful, indicating that your work might be used for teaching purposes at other institutions. It also provides insight into the countries where your work is being downloaded, which is particularly useful if your research is focused on a specific country. This could serve as evidence of engagement with your work in that country. There's also a visual representation and referrer URLs, which might show how your work is being referred or linked to. For instance, if you see a lot of referrals from the Department of Education, it could mean that your research is influencing policy changes.
Moving back to the left-hand side, under "Usage Reports" and the graph image, ensure that it's set to look at all works and all time. This will provide a comprehensive view of all your work throughout its time in Research Online. The graph displays the number of downloads in recent months, showing an upward trajectory in Renee's case. Metadata page hits indicate instances where people are viewing your work's record without necessarily downloading the full text.
Renee has two works in Research Online: "Digital Journeys" with 242 downloads and "Journey to the New Frontier" with 51 downloads. The Author Dashboard will also provide the download count for each piece of work you have in the repository.
There are also other PlumX alternative metrics here, discussing social media engagement and usage counts. In total, Renee's works have 81 abstract views and 47 download counts.
I hope this guide helps you navigate the Author Dashboard in Research Online by yourself. Thank you.
End transcript.
Altmetric collates the online mentions and shares of your research outputs from a range of sources into a score, which is represented by a donut shape, where colours represent the different types of attention.
Altmetric data is available through the database Dimensions. At UOW we’re using the free version, so we have access to data regarding publications, citations and the Altmetric Attention Score detailing social sharing and policy citations. You will need to sign in or create a free account.
This video (2:18) can show you how to navigate Dimensions to retrieve policy citations:
Video transcript: Dimensions.ai
I'm going to take you through having a look at some alternative metrics that are available from this website dimensions.ai. It's a great website to have a look at grant information, policy citations, and policy documents—your publications in a very broad sense. Not just the publications that are listed in Scopus and Web of Science; for example, patents and clinical trials are included in this database.
To start, you go to dimensions.ai and then click on this button, 'Access Free Web App,' which will take you to the Dimensions database. To search for yourself, you click 'Researcher and more,' and then you're able to type in the name—your name. If you've got a more common name than the example that I'm using now, you can use the affiliation that's listed here to help you filter through the list of results. Select your name and then click on 'Limit To,' and then we'll just see the publications that Dimensions has for this author.
To make it easier to view the alternative metrics, change the sort from 'relevance' to 'altmetric attention score,' and then we'll see the ones with a higher number float to the top of the list. You can click the altmetric button—hover over the altmetric button—and you'll see where it's been mentioned in the news or somebody's blogged about this paper, and where it's been referenced in policy sources. And this is what I really wanted to show you with this video.
So when we go—when we click on the name of the publication, we can see a new window opens. We can see the name of the paper and the policy that it's been cited in. You can click through that policy; you can have a look at the context that they're citing your paper. Or sometimes it's just enough to know that it's been cited in a policy, so that you can reference that in a promotion application form, in a grant application form, where you're talking about the reach or the impact of your work outside of academia.
End transcript.
PlumX metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual research outputs in the online environment. PlumX metrics are divided into separate categories: citations (including policy citations), usage, captures, mentions, and social media.
PlumX data is available through the database Scopus.
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