Bibliometrics to Altmetrics: Changing Trends in Assessing Research Impact

Quantitative measurement in library arena for the impact of researches has travelled a lot from bibliometrics to citation metrics and for article level and author level assessment upto h-index, g-index and tol-index, etc. Altmetrics incorporates multiple data sources-both traditional and emerging. The data collected in altmetrics are not limited to calculating article level metrics, but have the potential to be used to generate journal and author metrics as well with new form of scholarly publication. Thus, altmetrics provides researchers and scholars both the new ways to track influence across a wide range of media and platforms. An attempt is made in this paper to discuss the term 'altmetrics' and its possible implications in library world.