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Alternative metrics

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Alternative metrics Norsk flagg

While traditional bibliometrics focus on academic citations, alternative indicators offer a broader view of public engagement. These metrics track how research outputs are captured, discussed, and circulated across non-scholarly digital spaces. By monitoring online footprints, including social media networks, specialised blogs, and global news coverage. Altmetrics provide immediate feedback on how a publication, author, research or organisation is resonating beyond the academic landscape.

1. Public & Media Discourse

This indicator captures the volume of online discussions and digital tracking surrounding a publication across news channels, professional blogs, social networks, and official government policy briefs. This metric can be found on some publisher websites displaying an Altmetric icon, or in databases such as Scopus via PlumX metrics.

Advantages Limitations
  • Captures visibility outside the academic community, highlighting how research influences policy-makers, journalists, and the public

  • Delivers near-instant tracking of public engagement right after an article goes live

  • can provide an indication of the wider societal relevance of research
  • High digital visibility or virality does not equate to scientific rigor, validity, or long-term academic impact

  • can be influenced by short-term trends, media interest and researchers' engagement with media

  • coverage varies substantially across disciplines, fields like medicine or climate science naturally secure more media space than niche or technical topics

2. Views and Downloads

Views and downloads monitors the frequency with which a research paper is opened or downloaded from institutional repositories, preprint servers, or official publisher landing pages. These are typically displayed on the webpage where the article is hosted.

Advantages Limitations
  • Serves as a proxy for initial audience interest

  • can help assess online engagement with research, particularly for open access publications
  • does not indicate whether the research was actually read or used

  • recording practices vary across platforms, making comparisons difficult

  • these metrics are tied to specific local platforms and cannot be compared across different web repositories.

3. Saves and Digital Bookmarks

This metric tracks the total number of times an article is compiled into private research folders on digital bibliography platforms, such as Mendeley. These can be displayed on the webpage where the article is hosted.

Advantages Limitations
  • provides an early indication of interest among researchers

  • can signal potential future use or citation

  • captures engagement before traditional citation counts become available
  • coverage varies across fields and user groups
  • a save does not necessarily indicate that a publication has been read or used

  • depends on the adoption and coverage of the reference management platform

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Questions?

For questions about publication data, assistance with your own bibliometric analysis, or advice on managing researcher profiles and improving the visibility of your research, email us at forskning@ub.uit.no.

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