Altmetric, a provider of software to determine alternative metrics, has announced the release of Altmetric for Institutions, a web-based software application that enables higher educational institutions to track and evaluate the online dissemination and impact of their research.
Altmetric collates mentions of scholarly articles across traditional and social media, blog posts, reference management tools, and post-publication peer review sites. In addition to these established sources, the data will now also include whether an article has been cited or mentioned in public policy documents, offering a much needed insight into the real-life application of research.
Incorporating advanced search and filtering functionality, Altmetric for Institutions offers librarians, research administrators, communication officers and researchers a way of monitoring and reporting on the online attention surrounding individual articles.
Based on data from existing repository or CRIS systems, users are able to view original mentions and summary reports for published articles at the author, group, departmental and institutional level.
Altmetric for Institutions promises a more complete picture of the impact of published research than download or citation counts alone can offer.
Dr Juergen Wastl, Research Strategy Officer at Cambridge University and development partner for the new platform, commented; ‘Altmetric for Institutions has so far proved a very useful tool for monitoring and collating information on the attention that our published research is receiving. It is invaluable in that we can analyse and report on data that would otherwise take weeks or months to collate - and in doing so can better support not only our departments and faculties but also our research networks and initiatives.’
