Social Media Metrics

Social media metrics are the +1s, likes, shares, and tweets about research.

By tracking social media metrics, you can see how well a researcher is promoting their work.

This is especially important for early career researchers to measure and understand who is interacting with their work.

Of course, social media also allows us to track the buzz and attention surrounding research.


The following table lists the sources that PlumX tracks for Social Media.

Metrics as of May 28, 2021

Metric Source(s) Description
Likes Vimeo, YouTube The number of times an artifact has been liked
Shares, Likes & Comments Facebook The number of times a link was shared, liked or commented on
Ratings Amazon, Goodreads, SourceForge The average user rating of the artifact.
Recommendations Figshare The number of recommendations an artifact has received
Scores Reddit The number of upvotes minus downvotes on Reddit
Tweets Twitter via Gnip The number of tweets and retweets that mention the artifact

To see the changes we have made to our metrics go to our audit log.