PlumX Metrics

Research metrics (also known as altmetrics), immediately measure awareness and interest and give us new ways to uncover and tell the stories of research.

PlumX Metrics help answer the questions and tell the stories about research.

Technologies that encourage communication, sharing and other interaction with research output—leave “footprints” to show the way back to who is interested in the research and why. Technologies that make processing big data possible—make it possible to categorize and analyze all of the metric data from the many interactions.

About PlumX Metrics

PlumX Metrics provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment. Examples include research being mentioned in the news or included in a policy citation. Collectively known as PlumX Metrics, these metrics are divided into five categories to help make sense of the huge amounts of data involved and to enable analysis by comparing like with like.

PlumX gathers and brings together appropriate research metrics for all types of scholarly research output. We categorize metrics into 5 separate categories: Citations, Usage, Captures, Mentions, and Social Media:

Citations	This is a category that contains both traditional citation indexes such as Scopus, as well as citations that help indicate societal impact such as Clinical or Policy Citations. Examples: citation indexes, patent citations, clinical citations, policy citations Learn more about Citations
Usage	A way to signal if anyone is reading the articles or otherwise using the research. Usage is the number one statistic researchers want to know after citations. Examples: clicks, downloads, views, library holdings, video plays Learn more about Usage
Captures	Indicates that someone wants to come back to the work. Captures can be a leading indicator of future citations. Examples: bookmarks, code forks, favorites, readers, watchers Learn more about Captures
Mentions	Measurement of activities such as news articles or blog posts about research. Mentions is a way to tell that people are truly engaging with the research. Examples: blog posts, comments, reviews, Wikipedia references, news media Learn more about Mentions
Social media	This category includes the shares, likes, etc. that reference the research. Social Media can help measure “buzz” and attention. Social media can also be a good measure of how well a particular piece of research has been promoted. Examples: shares, likes, comments Learn more about Social Media

Citation metrics

Citation counts in PlumX are measures of how many times your research has been cited by others. Including citation counts alongside the other modern metrics categories allows for side-by-side analysis.

The following are the sources of citation counts that are currently in PlumX.

Metric	Source(s)	Description
Citation Indexes	Chinese Science Citation Database	The number of Chinese Citation Database (CSCD) works that cite the artifact
Citation Indexes	CrossRef	The number of articles that cite the artifact according to CrossRef
Citation Indexes	PubMed Central	The number of PubMed Central articles that cite the artifact
Citation Indexes	PubMed Central Europe	The number of PubMed Central Europe articles that cite the artifact
Citation Indexes	SciELO opens in new tab/window	The number of SciELO articles that cite the artifact
Citation Indexes	Scopus opens in new tab/window	The number of articles that cite the artifact according to Scopus
Citation Indexes	SSRN opens in new tab/window	The number of SSRN works that cite the artifact
Patent Citations	USPTO opens in new tab/window	The number of patents that reference the artifact according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office
Patent Family Citations	EPO opens in new tab/window, IPO opens in new tab/window, JPO opens in new tab/window, USPTO opens in new tab/window, WIPO opens in new tab/window Read more about Patent Family Citations	The number of patent families that reference the artifact according to the European Patent Office (EPO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom (IPO), United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and Japan Patent Office (JPO)
Clinical Citations	PubMed Clinical Guidelines opens in new tab/window	The number of Clinical Guidelines from PubMed that reference the artifact
Policy Citations	Policy document source lists curated by PlumX and Overton.io opens in new tab/window	The number of policy documents that reference an artifact

Usage metrics

Article level usage metrics are the number one statistic that researchers want to know after their citation counts.

Is anyone reading our work?
Did anyone watch our videos?

PlumX is unique in combining artifact-level Usage data with other artifact-level metrics. Below is a listing of the current Usage metrics that PlumX supports, and the providers of the data.

Metric	Source(s)	Description
Abstract Views	Airiti iRead eBooks, Digital Commons, SciELO opens in new tab/window, SSRN opens in new tab/window	The number of times the abstract of an artifact has been viewed
Downloads	Airiti iRead eBooks, Airiti Library, Digital Commons, Institutional Repositories, Mendeley Data, Pure (for select customers only), RePEc, SSRN opens in new tab/window	The number of times an artifact has been downloaded
Full Text Views	Airiti iRead eBooks, PubMedCentral (for PLOS articles only) opens in new tab/window, SciELO opens in new tab/window	The number of times the full text of an article has been viewed
Views	Mendeley Data	The number of times the artifact has been viewed

Capture metrics

Captures track when end users bookmark, favorite, become a reader, become a watcher, etc.Captures indicate that someone wants to come back to the work. Captures are important because they are an early, leading indicator of future citations.

Below is a table of the metrics sources that PlumX uses for capture metrics.

Metric	Source(s)	Description
Readers	Mendeley, SSRN opens in new tab/window	The number of people who have added the artifact to their library/briefcase
Exports/Saves	SSRN opens in new tab/window	This includes the number of times an artifact’s citation has been exported direct to bibliographic management tools or as file downloads, and the number of times an artifact’s citation/abstract and HTML full text (if available) have been saved, emailed or printed.

Mention metrics

Mentions are the blog posts, comments, reviews, and Wikipedia links about your research.This category measures when people are truly engaging with your research.Mentions are where the stories of how people are interacting with research can be discovered. The PlumX platform automatically uncovers mentions.

Below is a listing of the sources of mentions that PlumX monitors.

Metric	Source(s)	Description
Blog Mentions	Blog lists curated by PlumX	The number of blog posts written about the artifact
News Mentions	News source lists from Lexis-Nexis Metabase and curated by PlumX	The number of news articles written about the artifact
References	Wikipedia (English, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian)	The number of references found to the artifact

Social media metrics

Social media metrics are the +1s, likes and shares about research.By tracking social media metrics, you can see how well a researcher is promoting their work.This is especially important for early career researchers to measure and understand who is interacting with their work.Of course, social media also allows us to track the buzz and attention surrounding research.

The following table lists the sources that PlumX tracks for Social Media.

Metric	Source(s)	Description
Shares, Likes & Comments	Facebook	The number of times a link was shared, liked or commented on
Ratings	SSRN opens in new tab/window	The average user rating of the artifact.