Using alternative scholarly metrics to showcase the impact of your research: An introduction for researchers

Scholarship is increasingly being created, disseminated, and measured on digital and social platforms. If Twitter exchanges, Facebook “saves,” and YouTube hits are the new metrics for tracking scholarship, how are we measuring societal and educational impact and outreach? How can researchers display their research impact using social media on promotion and tenure dossiers? This webinar will discuss altmetrics, alternative scholarly metrics that measure the impact and use of scholarship. We will focus on PlumX, the tool used at USC, which combines traditional and new metrics to paint a comprehensive portrait of your scholarly output and its reach in various communities and with different stakeholders.

Caroline Muglia, Co-Associate Dean for Collections and Technical Services; and Head, Resource Sharing and Collection Assessment, USC Libraries 

• Describe the potential and strengths of using alternative scholarly metrics that measure the impact and use of scholarship
• Describe basic features of the measurement tool PlumX and how they are used
• Describe potential weaknesses of using alternative scholarly metrics and how to address them