Institutions and researchers are facing increasing pressures from management, funders, and governmental reviews to demonstrate impact and engagement beyond academia. While demonstrating this impact continues to be challenging, the growth of online scholarly communication combined with advancing technologies offer us the ability to understand the reach and impact of research in ways that were never before possible.
In this hands-on workshop, we’ll explore how Altmetric tools can be used to analyse data such as mainstream media mentions, cites in policy documents, blogs, and social media in order to garner a much richer picture of the eventual outcomes and impact of research. The session will be focused on the data, data sources, and strategies for investigating complex impact questions.
The session will cover the following topics and activities:
- Explanation of Altmetric data, how it is collected and how it should & should not be interpreted
- Activity to demonstrate the ways in which researchers, librarians, and research administrators can use the Altmetric application in their work activities.
- Exploration of the complex analyses Altmetric has performed (e.g. attention for open versus non-open access journals, analysis of the relationship between charitable research spend and Altmetric mentions).
- Demonstration of how attendees can perform detailed and extensive analyses by making use of data exports or the Altmetric API.
- Review different ways to integrate altmetrics into your institution’s existing platforms.
