Tag Archives: impact

Altmetrics and Web Analytics

Altmetrics is defined as being an alternative to the typical way of measuring the amount of impact that journals or authors have had in academia. It is an interesting parallel to looking at web analytics as they can both be used to validate the content that is published online. Web analytics uses the web data in order to measure whether the website is easily used and whether there are ways in order to improve its usability. Both methods serve to demonstrate the amount of impact that the creator has had in giving information to the targeted population.

Web Analytics:

With web analytics, those who are in charge of organizing and creating a website can use the information in order to improve its content and the navigation around the website. For example, web developers can find information about pages that are viewed the most and the least in order to determine which web pages hold important information to the users. Moreover, there are statistics that show information on the number of new or returning website visitors. This can help web developers determine what web pages are useful for those who are coming back to a website as well as information that might be important to new visitors.

Useful web analytics tools for social media:

Some of the popular web analytics tools include the following:

• Facebook Insights
• Twitalyzer
• Pinterest Analytics
• Simply Measured – for Instagram
• Reddit Insight / Web Analytics (http://www.reddit.com/r/analytics)
• YouTube Analytics

Question: Have you heard of any others that have been very useful for analyzing data on social media?

Altmetrics:

On the other hand, altmetrics is typically used for journals and authors that are mentioned in social media. If a paper is mentioned within a social media platform, this will increase the score associated with the paper. Moreover, the type of source (e.g. a newspaper article compared to a tweet) will give more points as well. Different authors will also give a certain number of points according to how often it is posting (e.g. a professor sharing a link with other professors will be worth more points than a journal sending out the link). The total score is then calculated based off of these three points.

Questions: Have you seen any instances of altmetrics used? What was their usefulness? What were the limitations?

Therefore, analytics can be a useful tool in order to validate the work that has been completed – whether it is the impact it has had in academia or the impact that has been generated on websites.

Read about more information on common challenges that people are facing when using social media for community outreach after completing an analysis of your own work.