Beyond the h-index: Why Citations Alone Misrepresent Impact
The traditional bibliometric model measures research impact by tracking how often other scholars cite your work. This is meaningful, peer citation is a genuine signal of scholarly influence. But it is also incomplete in ways that matter.
Citation data tells you about your impact within academia. It tells you nothing about:
- Whether journalists, policymakers, or practitioners found and acted on your findings
- Whether your work was debated publicly or referenced in policy documents
- Whether patient advocacy groups, NGOs, or community organisations engaged with your research
- Whether your findings reached the millions of people your academic audience never will
Altmetrics, alternative metrics, fill this gap. They track the online attention, engagement, and influence of research outputs beyond formal academic citation.
What Altmetrics Measure
Altmetric tools aggregate attention data from a wide range of non-academic sources. The most widely used platform, Altmetric.com, assigns a colour-coded "Altmetric score" (also called the "donut") to individual papers based on activity across:
News and media: Mentions in online news articles, science journalism outlets, and press releases
Policy documents: References in government reports, parliamentary briefings, WHO documents, NICE guidelines, and similar official policy sources
Social media: Mentions on Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Mastodon
Blogs and non-academic websites: References in research blogs, science communication sites, and specialist practitioner forums
Datasets and software: Reuse of data and code generated by your research
Wikipedia: References in Wikipedia articles (a signal of wide public relevance)
Peer review platforms: Open peer review commentary on pre-print servers
Each type of mention contributes differently to the overall score, with policy and news mentions weighted more heavily than social media.
Why Altmetrics Matter for Researchers
For Funders
An increasing number of research funding bodies, including the Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK, and the Gates Foundation, now ask researchers to demonstrate broader impact beyond academic citation. Altmetric data is an evidence-based way to show that your research reached and influenced non-academic audiences.
In grant applications, an altmetric score showing a paper was cited in three policy documents and covered by twelve news outlets is concrete, verifiable evidence of public engagement, something narrative descriptions of "potential impact" cannot match.
For Institutional Research Assessment
Research impact frameworks increasingly look beyond traditional citation metrics. In the UK REF, "impact" (defined as influence beyond academia) accounts for 25% of the total research quality score. Altmetric data can form part of the evidence base for impact case studies.
For Researchers Themselves
Altmetrics give researchers a real-time signal of whether their communication efforts are working. A paper with a high altmetric score that you promoted on social media, issued a press release for, and shared with a policy network demonstrates the value of that communication investment.
A paper with zero altmetric activity despite being published in a high-impact journal suggests that good research alone doesn't create public engagement, active communication does.
How to Check Your Altmetric Data
Paper-level: Many publisher websites now display the Altmetric donut directly on the paper's abstract page. If it is not there, search for your paper's DOI at altmetric.com.
Profile-level: Altmetric for Institutions provides institution-wide dashboards, ask your library or research support office whether your institution has access.
Google Scholar: While Google Scholar doesn't display altmetric data directly, high-profile papers with significant public engagement often appear in news alerts and are referenced in sources that appear in Google searches.
How to Build Your Altmetric Profile
Altmetrics are a consequence of good science communication, not something you can generate artificially. The practices that generate genuine altmetric attention are the same ones that constitute responsible research communication.
Write a press release (or work with your comms team)
Institutional communications teams can issue press releases for significant findings. These get picked up by science journalism outlets that Altmetric monitors. A single news article mentioning your paper can generate hundreds of views and a meaningful altmetric score.
Share your findings in policy-relevant spaces
If your research has policy implications, share it directly with relevant government bodies, think tanks, or advocacy organisations. References in government reports and parliamentary submissions are among the most valuable altmetric signals.
A thoughtfully written thread on X/Twitter or LinkedIn post explaining your findings, in accessible language, can reach thousands of researchers, practitioners, and interested members of the public who would never have found the paper itself. Each mention contributes to your altmetric score and extends your paper's reach.
Engage with pre-print communities
If your field uses pre-print servers, depositing early and engaging with commentary on your pre-print builds community engagement that Altmetric tracks.
Make your work accessible
Papers that are Open Access generate significantly more altmetric activity than paywalled equivalents, for the same reason they generate more citations, people can actually read and share them. See our guide on Open Access and research discoverability.
The Limits of Altmetrics
Altmetrics have real limitations that researchers should understand before citing them in formal evaluations:
- Gaming is possible: Social media mentions can be generated artificially, inflating scores without genuine engagement
- Field variation is extreme: Papers in medicine and public health attract media attention far more easily than papers in mathematics or literary theory
- Correlation with quality is imperfect: Controversial findings, sensationalised research, and replication failures sometimes generate high altmetric scores
- Not standardised for formal assessment: Different institutions and funders weight altmetric data differently; always confirm what is accepted as evidence
The value of altmetrics is not as a replacement for citation metrics, but as a complement, showing a dimension of impact that citations cannot capture.
Research impact is multi-dimensional, and so is how you measure and build it. The Researchvy Media division helps researchers translate their findings into formats that generate genuine public engagement and altmetric attention, from visual abstracts to policy briefs to knowledge translation content. Get a full visibility and impact audit from Researchvy Intelligence to understand your current position across both citation and non-traditional impact measures.
