Altmetrics: A measure of scientific impact on social networks

The evolution of the World Wide Web, the changes imposed by the phenomenon of digitalization and the development of information technologies have impacted sensitively on scientific communication, which begins to move its practices from the academic field to the sphere of web 2.0. In this context, the Internet and social media are consolidating as platforms for information, production, interaction, collaboration and scientific evaluation, creating the need of new indicators to measure the impact that publications acquire in this universe. It arises a new type of alternative metrics- or altmetrics-, which base their activity on the web environment, measuring the influence that academic papers achieve through online platforms. However, some limitations of these indicators and, specially, the existence of certain resistance to change, both by industry of scientific publication and the researchers themselves, have caused a restricted use of this type of e-tools, limiting the impact and attention that academic papers acquire in social media.