We created an infographic of the research and metrics that PlumX covers. In it we pointed out that we track metrics on 67 different types of output.

Tracking anything is a challenge. To track a piece of research you need a way to identify it. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) has been widely adopted to identify articles. But what about non-article output? Or articles that do not have a DOI?

Identifying it also depends upon its form or platform. For example, a book has an ISBN while a video might have a YouTube ID.

To gather metrics on more than 52 million pieces of research, Plum Analytics needs to use as many IDs as possible and this graphic shows some important examples.

One important identifier is the URL. Since PlumX is a web-native application it can track a research artifact by URL. This is particularly useful when tracking blog posts by your researchers and faculty members.

Another important part of identifier processing is that PlumX works behind the scenes to link different identifiers for the same work. For example, an institutional repository ID links to a DOI which links to a PMID. In this way, PlumX can track different versions of the same work — the green open access, the pre-print and the published version — and gather and show all of those metrics in one place.

To see more about coverage…

Download the Coverage Infographic.