PlumX, Exchanges and You

Writing about web page https://plumanalytics.com/

Since the start of 2022 the Plum Analytics module (AKA PlumX) has been installed on Exchanges. You might have noticed on each of the articles’ landing pages, below the native download statistics, a new little graphic. If you haven’t noticed – don’t worry, you’re not alone! I only discovered this week that a plug-in to my Chrome browser meant I’d not been seeing these metrics myself – luckily a bit of testing means I now know PlumX is actually working well.

If you’ve not come across the concept of altmetrics before, they’re loosly classed as alternatives to the traditional bibliometrics (e.g. impact factor and h-index) that many scholars are more familiar instead. They’re intended as, in part, an alternative perspective to these or perhaps compliment to these ‘hard’ metrics, and provide an insight into how and where people are talking about or interacting with publications. As PlumAnalytics, the creator of the app describe it ‘research output[s]…leave “footprints” to show the way back to who is interested in the research and why’.

Hence, for example you’ll find an altmetric app like PlumX tracks things such as social media interactions, online news media or online reference managers which relate to how an article is being used, discussed or referenced in a much more holistic sense than traditional bibliometric factors.

PlumX is one such altmetric system then, which offers authors new ways to see how people are engaging with their research. The widget we have is enabled across the Warwick University Press family of journals, so you should see it on our companion titles too. The PlumX tool draws on dozens of metrics mined from the open Web.

Hence, now you can learn a lot more about how a paper is interesting to other scholars than a simple download metric alone!

Gareth Johnson : 09 Jun 2022 13:21 |  Tags: Altmetrics Bibliometrics Citation Discussion Metrics |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem