Altmetrics is the creation and study of new metrics based on the Social Web for analyzing, and informing scholarship. It goes beyond traditional citation-based indicators and raw usage factors such as downloads or click-through numbers. Instead it explores readership, diffusion and reuse indicators that can be tracked via blogs, social media, peer production systems, collaborative annotation tools, including social bookmarking and reference management services. Read more about Altmetrics in Altmetrics manifesto.
Noteworthy altmetrics tools and services:
Mendeley is an online research-collaboration platform and academic database. Mendeley's metrics include how often papers are downloaded, shared with colleagues, and commented on.
Altmetric tracks mentions of scholarly works on social media sites, scholarly bookmarking services and in science news outlets. The Altmetric Bookmarklet instantly gets article-level metrics for any recent paper.
Bibliography and Selected Articles
Careless, J. (2013). Altmetrics 101: A Primer. Information Today
Blogs
Arbesman, S. (2012, January 9). New Ways to Measure Science. Wired Science Blogs.
Howard, J. (2012, February 28). Tracking scholarly influence beyond the impact factor. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Luther, J. (2012, July 25). Altmetrics: trying to fill the gap. The Scholarly Kitchen.