A recent trend is the assignment of an identifier to a specific individual. This research identifier will help to gather up all published research by an individual with a single search, help to disambiguate similar or identically-named researchers and track research output from insititution to institution. Researchers can apply for a free identifier from:
Scholars are used to traditional metrics like citation counts and journal impact factors - alternative metrics (altmetrics) are a suite of tools and measures that seek to define the influence and impact of a scholarly work in other ways which often includes social media. Greg Tanenbaum's"Article-level metrics : a SPARC primer" offers an overview of one type of alt-metric evaluation.
Examples of altmetric tools:
Plum Analytics (requires subscription - currently owned by Ebsco)
