A Look at Altmetrics and Its Growing Significance to Research Libraries

Abstract

Many people involved in the scholarly communications process – from academics, students, and researchers, to publishers, librarians, and learners – are participating in a dynamic digital context now more than ever; moreover, digital acts of communication and dissemination of scholarship leave traces of impact that can now be culled and quantified. Altmetrics, metrics based on the social web, provide an opportunity both to more acutely measure the propagation of this communication and to reconsider how we measure research impact in general. While the use of social media and analytics and the structure of tenure and promotion practices are not consistent across or even within disciplines, the practices and experimentation of early adopters, from researchers and institutions to industry, yield stories, lessons learned, and practices worth investigating. Researchers and academic librarians both face new opportunities to engage and support the use of altmetrics tools and methods and to re-examine how scholarship is defined, collected, preserved, used, and discussed. This report summarizes the major trends, opportunities and challenges of altmetrics to both researchers and academic research libraries and outlines ways in which research libraries can participate in shaping this emergent field. Also featured in this article is a micro-case study featuring a partnership between the University of Pittsburgh and Plum Analytics that illustrates how libraries can begin to map out their role on campus in this arena.