v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 714 entries across 20 domains · CC-BY 4.0714 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack EStablev2026.2

Article-level metrics

Indicators reported at the level of an individual article rather than the journal in which it was published, typically including citations, views, downloads, saves and altmetric signals.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A researcher includes article-level views, downloads and policy citations in a tenure dossier.
Is an instance
A funder asks applicants to characterise their most important paper using ALMs rather than journal venue.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
Using ALMs as raw, decontextualised ranking signals.
Not an instance
Reporting ALMs without disclosing the data source or window.

Editorial commentary

Article-level metrics (ALMs) were popularised by PLOS from 2009 as a deliberate counter to journal-level reasoning about research impact. ALMs disaggregate journal-level proxies into article-specific evidence, recognising that within any journal there is wide variation in citation and attention outcomes. A typical ALM dashboard includes citation counts from multiple databases, full-text views, PDF downloads, social-media mentions, reference-manager saves, policy citations and discussion (blogs, comments). DORA's first recommendation is to move evaluation toward article-level evidence.

References

PLOS Article-Level Metrics documentation. Lin J, Fenner M. 'Altmetrics in evolution', Information Standards Quarterly, 2013.

Also known as

ALMs · Article-level indicators

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Article-level metrics"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/article-level-metrics" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Article-level metrics",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/article-level-metrics",
  "description": "Indicators reported at the level of an individual article rather than the journal in which it was published, typically including citations, views, downloads, saves and altmetric signals.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/responsible-research-assessment/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/article-level-metrics",
  "sameAs": [
    "ALMs",
    "Article-level indicators"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

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