Altmetrics: What are they good for? | PLOS Opens

"Last week, along with a number of PLOS folks, I attended the 1AM Meeting (for “First (UK) Altmetrics Conference”) in London. The meeting was very interesting with a lot of technical progress being made and interest from potential users of the various metrics and indicators that are emerging. Bubbling along underneath all this there is an outstanding question that although it appeared in different contexts remains unanswered. What do these various indicators mean? Or perhaps more sharply what are they useful for? This question was probably most sharply raised in the online discussion by Professor David Colquhoun. David is a consistent and trenchant critic of all research assessment metrics. I agree with many of his criticisms of the use and analysis of all sorts of research metrics, while disagreeing with his overall position of rejecting all measures, all the time. Primarily this comes down to us being interested in different questions ..."