Integration of More Data Sources

• Expanded Social Media Platforms: Altmetrics are increasingly incorporating data from a wider range of social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube. Previously, platforms like Twitter and Facebook dominated altmetric measurements, but these newer platforms offer unique insights into how research is discussed across diverse audiences.
• Data from Preprint Servers: As the use of preprints in academic publishing grows (e.g., arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv), altmetrics are tracking the attention these pre-publication articles receive. Preprints have gained significant traction, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, where rapid dissemination of findings was critical.

Real-Time and Granular Impact Tracking

• Instantaneous Tracking: Tools like Altmetric.com and Plum Analytics are increasingly able to provide real-time updates on article mentions, allowing researchers to see the immediate impact of their work.
• More Granular Insights: Altmetrics now provide more detailed information about who is engaging with research (e.g., policymakers, journalists, practitioners) and where the discussions are taking place. This level of specificity helps authors understand the broader reach of their work.

Contextualizing Impact Beyond Citations

• Qualitative Insights: Altmetrics are evolving to offer more context to quantitative scores by identifying whether mentions are positive, neutral, or negative. This helps to distinguish between high engagement due to controversy or genuine academic interest.
• Field-Weighted Metrics: Some new altmetric tools now provide discipline-specific benchmarks to help compare the impact of research within specific fields, accounting for differences in citation practices across disciplines.

Influence on Policy and Public Discourse

• Tracking Policy Citations: Altmetrics are increasingly capturing mentions of research in policy documents, government reports, and think tank publications. Platforms like Overton.io track how academic research influences policy decisions, offering a clearer view of societal impact.
• Media Influence: The rise of media tracking means altmetrics can now capture how research is being discussed in mainstream media outlets, blogs, and news websites. This broadens the traditional scope of academic influence and connects it to public discourse.

Normalisation and Standardisation of Altmetric Scores

• Normalisation: There’s been a growing focus on normalising altmetric scores to account for differences in publication type, age, and discipline. This makes it easier to compare altmetric data across studies, ensuring that older or niche articles are not unfairly disadvantaged.
• DOI and ORCID Integration: Altmetric platforms are better integrated with unique identifiers like DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) and ORCID iDs to ensure accurate and reliable tracking of authors and publications across platforms.

More Sophisticated Visualisations

• Altmetric Visualisations: New visualisation tools, such as Altmetric badges and Plum Print donuts, help authors and institutions easily see and understand the range of impact their research has across different mediums.
• Network Maps: Some tools are experimenting with citation and collaboration maps, which allow users to visualize how research spreads across institutions, fields, and geographic regions.

Altmetrics for Open Science

• Open Access and Open Data: With the growth of open science initiatives, altmetrics are increasingly used to measure the impact of openly available datasets and research outputs. This includes tracking downloads, re-use of data, and mentions in collaborative platforms like GitHub or Zenodo.
• Transparency and Reproducibility: Some altmetric tools now help track reproducibility efforts, including mentions of replication studies or datasets used in different research contexts.

In conclusion, altmetrics continue to develop in ways that provide richer, more nuanced insights into the societal and academic impact of research. From broader data integration to more sophisticated sentiment analysis and field-weighted metrics, these advancements reflect a shift towards real-time, comprehensive measurement of how research influences public, academic, and policy-related conversations. Who knows what technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence might bring to the field in the longer term. However, moving beyond simple tallies of publication totals and impact factors, modern analytic tools have emerged to improve on prior, manual methods of assessment. Under the right circumstances the ability to utilise this information can provide you with a powerful insight into specific aspects of the publishing landscape.