Jean Liu: Product Development Manager for Altmetric
Channel: ReCon Event
Date: 06/07/2017

The wonderful world of altmetrics: why researchers’ voices matter

Altmetrics are metrics and qualitative data about the online attention received by research outputs. With over 49 million mentions about research collected by data provider Altmetric.com (14 million mentions from 2016 alone), there is a wealth of fascinating information to analyse. Over the past 5 years, the awareness and usage of altmetrics experienced a meteoric rise amongst the scholarly community, with publishers being some of the earliest adopters. Now, universities, funders, and even pharmaceutical companies are taking an interest. But the core of altmetrics are the researchers, who act as both recipients and producers of online attention that gets captured. So how can researchers manage the narratives surrounding their work, watch out for media spin, and ensure that they get credit where it’s due? Altmetrics present an opportunity for researchers to really understand the audiences they are reaching, and find new ways for making their voices heard.