Altmetrics (a.k.a. Alternative metrics) are metrics and qualitative data that are complementary to traditional, citation-based metrics. Altmetrics can help monitor the reach of scholarly content emanating from within a knowledge organization.
The Altmetric Explorer for Institutions platform provides advanced and customizable options for researchers, faculty, staff and students at York University looking to track the altmetric attention associated with their research outputs. The Explorer pulls in several sources, including (but not limited to) policy and patent citations and news & social media mentions.
In addition to Altmetric Explorer, York University Libraries has also subscribed to Dimensions. Dimensions brings together grants, publications, citations, alternative metrics, clinical trials, patents and policy documents to deliver a platform that enables users to find and analyze research output information in a variety of ways. Dimensions also provides up-to-the minute online attention data via Altmetric, showing how often publications and clinical trials are discussed around the world. Working with both databases will allow users to run complex searches in Dimensions and then transfer (and save) those searches into their Altmetric Explorer account. Researchers can then see where their work has been mentioned in media, policy documents, scholarly blogs, Wikipedia, open peer reviews, academic syllabi and a variety of social media, including Twitter and Facebook.