Introduction to Altmetrics: A new metric for evaluating the impact of scientific outputs and collaborations

Background and aim: Altmetrics seeks to assess the scientific impact with new ways using data derived from the social Web. The aim of this paper aims to represent the concept, benefits, disadvantages and challenges of Altmetrics. Material and methods: This review article was conducted using the related literature. Findings: Unlike to the traditional evaluation methods which are done based on three filters ‘peer review’, ‘number of citations’, and ‘impact factors’, are time-consuming and can not to assess all the scientific productions, altmetrics evaluates the scientific productions, researchers' popularity and scientific cooperation in web and social networks using faster, broader, and more different metrics. However, altmetrics encounters to criticism and challenges such as the changing nature of web, lack of theory, and ease of scientific trick. Conclusion: Impact is a multi-dimensional concept and traditional citation methods cannot measure all aspects of the impact. Therefore, it is necessary to use altmetrics and on the other hand, considering the criticisms against altmetrics and doing more research to remove them, the advantages of altmetrics can be used as metrics to complete the traditional metrics.