Blog Mentions

Can apply to: Primarily articles, books, and other scholarly items with persistent identifiers , such as a DOI, url, or handle

Metric definition: The number of times a scholarly output has been linked to from a blog.

Metric calculation:  Blog mentions are comprised of raw counts of links to outputs, from blogs. Some services track links only for items with a persistent identifier.

Data sources:  Links from both scholarly and general interest blogs are tracked, though coverage varies between altmetrics services.

Appropriate use cases:  Discussions on blogs have been found to have a slight correlation to later citations. They are not a sure-fire indicator for later citations. Use blog mentions only to learn what other researchers or members of the public are saying about a piece of research. The number of blog mentions is less important than what is being said.

Limitations:  Given their unvetted nature, it is risky to assume that a link to a piece of research from any blog–even a scholarly one–constitutes quality criticism.

Inappropriate use cases:  Blog mentions should not be interpreted as a direct measure of quality or impact, even amongst researcher blog networks.

Available metric sources:  Altmetric, PlumX, Impactstory, CrossRef Event Data (for items with DOIs, on Wordpress.com-hosted blogs)

Transparency:  In all altmetrics services in which blog mentions are available, one can access the full-text of the blog mentions, making this a relatively transparent metric. However, no altmetrics service makes their full list of blogs tracked available, making it difficult to know the scope of such blogs overall.

Website:  n/a

Timeframe:  Altmetric began tracking blog mentions in October 2011 (meaning Impactstory’s coverage spans this time frame, as well). PlumX does not share information on its coverage dates for blog mentions.