Blogs are an important part of today’s scholarly communication ecosystem. Researchers often write about their own or others’ research, share data and carry on conversations that push their field forward. This is why we’ve been working hard to expand our coverage of blog mentions in PlumX.

PlumX tracks five categories of metrics – usage, captures, mentions, social media and citations (go here for more information). Mentions is the category where we uncover and track the conversations about the research. Blogs are a new source of Mentions metrics. And, because Mentions are buried in thousands of disparate sites that may not be focused on research topics all the time, these can be difficult metrics to find.

When a blog post refers to specific research output we will collect information about the post, including a snippet, to give you an easy way to see the blog posts in context within PlumX. We will also provide a link to the post itself.

Here is an example of an article we track in the field of economics.

You can see that this article has been referenced in two different blogs. By clicking on the hyperlinked number you are taken to a PlumX page with the title and snippet of each post.

From here you can click on the title in PlumX to see the blog post itself.

Another interesting Mention that PlumX reveals about this article is in a Wikipedia article about Agency Cost.

PlumX exposes the places this article was referenced and used, helping to uncover the stories of the research.