moving beyond the low-hanging #altmetrics fruit

30 October 2012

Here are the #altmetrics that I want to see for individual research papers:

How many journal clubs are discussing this?
How often was this mentioned at campus pubs?
How many entrepreneurs saved this into their Mendeley library?
How many lives were saved because of this?
How many patents were inspired by this?
What is the increase in GDP attributable to this research?

Ultimately, any efforts to move beyond basic citation metrics to assess the impact of scientific research should move us closer to actually measuring the actual impact of said research. Scientists often cite the benefit of basic research for the advancement of economic prosperity and human health and this is the kind of impact we should be trying to assign metrics to.

“Low hanging fruit” CC-BY Caza_No_7