In 2009, PLoS became the first publisher to add comprehensive usage and reach data to every published article so that the entire academic community could form their own assessments of their value. Today, we’re pleased to announce the addition of 3 new data sources to our Article Level Metrics (ALM) program: article usage from PubMed Central; number of users via Mendeley; and number of Facebook mentions. We have also re-vamped the display of ALM data on the ‘Metrics’ tab of each article.

To find out more about these article enhancements, you can watch a short (<2 minute) video and browse these screen shots.

This is the first in a series of forthcoming developments to ALM that we expect to roll out in the next 12 months – you can expect to see the addition of Twitter as a data source in the next few weeks and a number of tools will be added to make use of ALM data in the journals this year – so watch this blog for tagged posts.

Talking to various participants at the excellent Science Online 2012 event in North Carolina earlier this month it became clear that while some are ALM experts there are many who haven’t heard that PLoS provides performance data for every article including the following data from the sources noted:

Article usage – PLoS: page views, PDF and XML downloads. NEW: PubMedCentral: page views, PDF downloads

PubMedCentral: page views, PDF downloads Citations–CrossRef, PubMed Central, Scopus, ISI Web of Science

PLoS reader evaluation –Comments, Notes, Star rating

Blog coverage – Research Blogging, Nature Blogs

Social tools –CiteULike and Connotea. NEW: Mendeley and Facebook.

Additionally, PLoS provides context for the performance of each article by providing journal and topic averages so researchers can see how their research compares with that of others.

The best way to get familiar with ALM’s is to click on the metrics tab at the top of your article – then you can understand more about the impact of your research and the discussions that it inspired!