Twitter and Facebook are citing you: Meet PlumX

Twitter and Facebook are citing you: Meet PlumX

Alternative metrics attract interest among academic community: can they advance and promote research fields?
Do they effect the H-Index of the researcher? And are they relevant to your research career?

In addition to the citation-based measures, there are modern measuring methods to determine the impact and use of scientific information. Alternative metrics attract interest among academic community: can they advance and promote research fields? Do they effect the H-Index of the researcher? And are they relevant to your research career? 

A research conducted by Wisconsin Madison University researchers established a connection between the H-Index and activity in social media. The alternative metrics rely mostly on data from internet websites and social media.

Alternative metrics measure the influence of a certain publication in social media, according to the number of views, clicks, downloads, and mentions (in blogs, social media posts, etc.). PlumX – Plum Analytics is an advanced tool that allows measuring the scientific impact of a publication, relying on five different categories:

  • Usage – tracking the number of views and downloads of a certain publication or its summery 
  • Captures – tracking the number of times the users favorited the content, exported it to reference manager programs, etc. 
  • Mentions – tracking the mentions of the publications in blog posts, websites such as Wikipedia, and more 
  • Social Media – tracking the number of social media likes.
  • Citations – tracking the number of citations. 

Modern databases provide access to the Plum Analytics measures, including CRIS (Current Research Information System) – a system that helps researchers to organize and enhance their professional profiles with information on scholarly activities, intellectual property, creative works, and more.

Want to learn more?

May 2022 \ Issue #8 \ Writing, editing and graphic design: Reference & Instruction Team, Elyachar Central Library