Altmetrics, a term coined by Jason Priem, is a portmanteau for “alternative metrics” and was introduced to differentiate newer web-based metrics from the traditional journal citation-based metrics (Priem et al., 2011). There is no agreed-upon definition, although altmetrics are “…generally understood as metrics that measure impact beyond citations and define scholarly output in a broader sense than only peer-reviewed journal articles…” (Haustein et al., p. 374). Altmetrics are quite diverse. Article-level downloads or views, mentions in the media, saves to online reference managers, social media, data reuse, YouTube views, and citations in non-journal venues such as policy documents and patents are some examples of altmetrics.
Publisher websites are one source of altmetrics, especially article downloads and links to resources that aggregate altmetric data such as Altmetric.com or PlumX .
Texas A&M University Libraries licenses Altmetric Explorer from Altmetric.com, and it is set-up to search TAMU authors and departments. You can search for yourself or individual articles. The Almetric.com data is also integrated Dimensions Analytics, as well as Texas A&M University's institutional repository (OAKTrust) and researcher profile system (Scholars@TAMU).
The number of views can be found for materials uploaded into OAKTrust, and views/downloads for data uploaded to the Texas A&M Dataverse Repository.
Haustein, S., Bowman, T. D., & Costas, R. (2016). Interpreting “Altmetrics”: Viewing acts on social media through the lens of citation and social theories. In C. R. Sugimoto (Ed.), Theories of informetrics and scholarly communication: A festschrift in honor of Blaise Cronin (pp. 372–406).
Priem, J., Taraborelli, D., Groth, P., & Neylon, C. (2011). Altmetrics: A manifesto. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/185