Altmetrics is poised to replace the old models of assessing scholarly impact and quality, namely peer review, journal impact factors, and citation statistics.
Read more about altmetrics:
Altmetrics Manifesto “No one can read everything. We rely on filters to make sense of the scholarly literature, but the narrow, traditional filters are being swamped. However, the growth of new, online scholarly tools allows us to make new filters; these altmetrics reflect the broad, rapid impact of scholarship in this burgeoning ecosystem. We call for more tools and research based on altmetrics.”
Jason Priem speaks often on altmetrics. His presentations are on his Web site.
What is PLoS doing: Presentation sponsored by SPARC: On April 12, Pete Binfield, Publisher of PLoS One, gave an in-depth look at the the current status of Article Level Metrics, a discussion of what has been learned to date, and a glimpse into what is on the horizon for their further development and wider adoption.
Please feel free to call on our new Associate Dean Holly Mercer (Scholarly Communication, hollymercer at utk dot edu). She is available to meet with individuals or groups to discuss altmetrics and research analytics.
Holly can help faculty and administrators figure out: What is the need? Faculty evaluation? Funding opportunities? Collaborators? A unified presentation of research output?
What tools, both commercial (SciVal, Scopus) and Open Source, are out there?