Shouldn't we be using citations? When should you use reads, accesses, and downloads? Why use social media or news stories?

Some publication types are not consistently cited, or may not appear in academic databases - for these, reads, accesses and downloads may provide more accurate usage information. A good example is software/code.

They are also useful when including a recently published item on your publication list. These works have not had time to accumulate citations, but other measures can provide an indication of interest/use. For example, the article below was only 5 months old at the time of this picture. Few citations is to be expected, but does not say much about usage. Over 3500 accesses and being featured in 24 news outlets is perhaps more interesting!

Mentions of your work on social media and in the news may also indicate interest outside of academia. Read more about alternative metrics in Module 2.

The image shows a 5 month old article in Nature Geoscience. Under "Access and Citations", we can see that while it only has 2 citations in Web of Science, it has been accessed 3774 times. An Altmetric doughnut shows it has also been mentioned by 24 news outlets, 4 blogs, 88 tweets.

Screenshots taken from Nature Geoscience, all rights reserved.