“The National Information Standards Organization has published NISO RP-25-2016, Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Project. This recommended practice on altmetrics, an expansion of the tools available for measuring the scholarly impact of research in the knowledge environment, was developed by working groups that were part of NISO’s Altmetrics Initiative, a project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The document outlines altmetrics definitions and use cases, alternative outputs in scholarly communications, data metrics, and persistent identifiers in scholarly communications. This guidance was necessary because, before the project began, scholars had long expressed dissatisfaction with traditional measures of success, such as the Impact Factor, but needed standards relating to other viable assessment methods. Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Project represents the culmination of work that began with brainstorming sessions in 2013 and that included multiple in-person and virtual meetings, a white paper, conference presentations that gathered community input, and votes on draft documents by NISO’s voting membership. The effort built on NISO’s strength as a consensus-seeking organization to bring multiple perspectives, nuances, and needs into one set of recommendations upon which the scholarly community can rely. Scholars will find that the recommended practice addresses high-level ideas, such as the need for guidance on altmetrics, but also provides granular information on such topics as how the various metrics-providing vendors generate their data. Users of metrics will also find templates for starting work at their own institutions, as the intent is for the recommended practice to make altmetrics more widely used and more approachable than previously. Institutions can begin to apply these new metrics with greater confidence in their development, data gathering, and application…”