Alternative metrics provider Altmetric has announced that over 20 world-leading research institutions have now adopted the Altmetric for Institutions analytics platform to monitor and report on the engagement and attention surrounding their research outputs.
First launched in June 2014, the platform aggregates mentions of an institution's output from a number of non-traditional sources including public policy documents, mainstream and social media, post-publication peer-review and online reference managers.
According to Sue Mikilewicz, Director of Business Intelligence and Planning at the University of South Australia, a key benefit of the Altmetric platform is that it allows monitoring the impact of research – this includes non-traditional outputs such as policy papers, reports and creative works. Altmetric can also be used to monitor the effectiveness of the institution's open access policy and institutional repository – making it a very useful cross-departmental tool that will help to inform university-wide strategies and investment.
The platform is also providing valuable insight for non-academic research institutes.
