A formerly not-so-common term is quickly becoming part of the everyday vernacular. Altmetrics has spurred many articles and now a new start-up company seeking to capitalize on the rising fame. This topic was inspired by the article, “Two Architects of Library Discovery Tools Launch an Altmetrics Venture,” found on The Digital Shift.
Andrea Michalek and Mike Buschman left Serials Solutions / ProQuest in November 2011 and founded Plum Analytics. Altmetrics is short for alternative metrics, which provides a way to measure the impact of scholarly communication. The traditional and slow measure of citations in peer-reviewed articlse led to the creation of altmetrics, which pulls together all the usage data about the output a researcher has produced. Very interesting use of technology and one we will surely be hearing more about in the future.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
