Defining community recommended practice for altmetrics

Purpose In 2013, the National Information Standards Organization launched a three-year project to identify areas of potential community consensus around these new metrics and then develop recommended practices in those areas. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach After collecting community input on potential activities, NISO surveyed the community to prioritize five areas of work around which to develop community consensus. Findings The NISO Working Groups produced a set of recommended practices that included: definitions and use cases for alternative metrics, applications of metrics for non-traditional scholarly outputs, collections of persistent identifiers around which metrics can be built, and a Code of Conduct for metrics providers. Originality/value The development of standards and recommended practices around altmetrics will encourage adoption of these new metrics forms and will add to the trust in those metrics for the academy.