PLoS Article Level Metrics (ALM) and PLoS ALM Reports
The publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS) was one of the earliest adopters of altmetrics, beginning the process of aggregating mentions of PLoS articles in 2009. PLoS tracks Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Mendeley, CiteULike, F1000Prime, ScienceSeeker, ResearchBlogging, Wordpress.com, Wikipedia, ORCID, PLoS Comments, PubMed Central, and Figshare. These metrics are summarized on an article’s page on the PLoS website, and researchers can hover over or click on the summary for more detailed information.
Example of PLoS ALM
PLoS Reports is a tool that searches PLoS ALM data for many articles at once, and aggregates the data to build reports. Researchers can search a variety of ways, including by DOI, author, institution, publication date, keyword, and funder.
Limitations:
- PLoS only searches for mentions of its own articles; therefore, it can only be used for those who have published in PLoS.
- No one altmetric source is comprehensive. PLoS ALM does not track every source where a publication might be mentioned. Furthermore, due to the data harvesting techniques used, sometimes mentions are missed.
