We’ve covered a lot of different tools for sharing and promoting your research. From Twitter to blogging, and sharing slides to sharing data through Creative Commons, there’s lots of ways to shout about what you do and how you do it.

But how do you track whether any of these efforts are even being noticed? Well, that’s what Thing 22 is all about…alternative metrics!

Check out our video all about exciting analytics and metrics that are easy to use and brilliant at helping you find out what is going on in the online world that’s out there.

Video transcript

Thing 22 activities

Explore the analytics section of your Twitter account. What sort of things did you find out?

Track a URL using TweetReach. Try experimenting using a URL from an existing tweet

Add the Altmetric bookmarklet to your browser and test it out on some academic articles (either your own or from someone you know). Explore the resulting statistics as fully as you can

Blog about your experience of using these alternative metrics and what you think about them as an addition to more traditional metrics

Thing 22 learning outcomes

You should be able to understand the analytics functions behind Twitter

You should have experimented with TweetReach and see the data visualisation available

You should have experimented with Altmetric and have experience of the types of data collected by the service

You should understand the benefits of alternative metrics in addition to tradition metrics

You should have reflected on Thing 22 through blogging

Image: Miroslav Vajdic
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