Altmetrics coming of age? Not for Wikipedia

Ten days ago Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) published a special issue on altmetrics. I was the guest editor for the five altmetrics articles, and in the editorial that I titled Altmetrics have come of age I argued that

We no longer need to talk about whether it is possible to reliably collect altmetrics, or whether this is valuable information that can complement citations and usage statistics.

In June we have seen that the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) was awarded a grant by the Sloan Foundation to develop standards and recommended best practices for altmetrics.

Unfortunately Wikipedia - which is of course an important source of altmetrics information and was also mentioned in the editorial - doesn’t think so. When you try to go to the Altmetrics page on the English Wikipedia, you get this:

In other words, you are redirected to a short section on the Impact Factor page. I would go and start an altmetrics (and article-level metrics) page, but with my professional involvement in altmetrics it is difficult to write from a neutral point of view, one of the core Wikipedia policies.

Update August 13, 2013: We now have a nice altmetrics Wikipedia page thanks to the hard work of Egon Willighagen and others.