Altmetric It Bookmarklet

I have been using the Altmetric It Bookmarklet myself for a while now, and more recently as a really useful and quick tool to demonstrate to researchers the importance of thinking "outside the impact factor" and traditional citation metrics. Talking about twitter and social networking tools is all well and good, but nothing hits home to scientists like hard data and numbers. Using the doi of an article, the Altmetric It Bookmarklet will tell you how many times it has been tweeted, blogged about, shared on facebook, added to Mendeley and more.

Impact is not just about citations!

Take an article I have been using in workshops recently to explore the Google Scholar v PubMed idea, Is the coverage of google scholar enough to be used alone for systematic reviews (doi:10.1186/1472-6947-13-7). It was only published last month online (so too soon for any citations to have filtered through) but has already been tweeted by over 100 different accounts. Showing researchers these numbers highlights the value of using tools like twitter to share and disseminate research. Many people, such as industry practitioners, will probably use and apply the findings of your research without ever citing it. This usage still represents impact. You can also get a detailed breakdown of who is sharing your research through the 'more details' link, which opens up a wealth of opportunities for connecting with others. 

However, altmetrics not only capture usage and impact in the social space, but may potentially be an interesting leading indicator for citations. I would love to look at the latter in more detail and explore the correlation between early tweeting/sharing and citations over time.