How well developed are altmetrics? A cross-disciplinary analysis of the presence of 'alternative metrics' in scientific publications 1 (original) (raw)
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Scientometrics, 2014
In this paper an analysis of the presence and possibilities of altmetrics for bibliometric and performance analysis is carried out. Using the web based tool Impact Story, we collected metrics for 20,000 random publications from the Web of Science. We studied both the presence and distribution of altmetrics in the set of publications, across fields, document types and over publication years, as well as the extent to which altmetrics correlate with citation indicators. The main result of the study is that the altmetrics source that provides the most metrics is Mendeley, with metrics on readerships for 62.6% of all the publications studied, other sources only provide marginal information. In terms of relation with citations, a moderate spearman correlation (r=0.49) has been found between Mendeley readership counts and citation indicators. Other possibilities and limitations of these indicators are discussed and future research lines are outlined.
Bibliometrics to Altmetrics: A Changing Trend
IJLIS, 2018
Altmetrics include a much broader spectrum of measurements like citation counts, web based references, article views/downloads, social media mentions, news media mentions, etc. Traditional means of measuring the quality of new knowledge like the impact factor and h-index are being more effective and more meaningful through the addition of new, social media based altmetrics. altmetrics could reflect an alternative dimension of the research performance, close, perhaps, to science popularization and networking abilities, but far from citation impact. altmetrics are especially encouraging for research fields in the humanities that currently are difficult to study using established bibliometric methods. In this paper introduce altmetrics, their uses and its possible implications in libraries. The present study is based on review of published work in the field of altmetrics, bibliometrics and library and information Science.
Bibliometrics to Altmetrics: Changing Trends in Assessing Research Impact
DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 2015
Quantitative measurement in library arena for the impact of researches has travelled a lot from bibliometrics to citation metrics and for article level and author level assessment upto h-index, g-index and tol-index, etc. Altmetrics incorporates multiple data sources-both traditional and emerging. The data collected in altmetrics are not limited to calculating article level metrics, but have the potential to be used to generate journal and author metrics as well with new form of scholarly publication. Thus, altmetrics provides researchers and scholars both the new ways to track influence across a wide range of media and platforms. An attempt is made in this paper to discuss the term 'altmetrics' and its possible implications in library world.
An Altmetric As an Indicator of a Publication’s Scientific Impact
Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2018
The results of an empirical pilot project focused on the association between classical bibliometrics-publication, citation index, and journal cited half-life-and an altmetric-the assessment of an article's impact-are discussed. The analysis included an array of 37200 domestic articles indexed in SCI-E in 2015. Two altmetrics are used: usage counts for the last 180 days, U1, and usage counts since February 1, 2013, U2. A significant Kendall rank correlation has been identified between citation indices and article-level metrics. A stronger correlation has been observed for long usage counts, U2. The relationship between usage metrics and traditional journal-level metrics (cited half-life) has been analyzed. A rather weak negative correlation between cited half-life and U1 (U2) has been revealed, which is described by an inverse logarithmic dependence. In the authors' opinion, altmetrics should not be opposed to classical bibliometrics; they should be used as additional metrics to assess an article's impact.
Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community
2013
Altmetrics, indices based on social media platforms and tools, have recently emerged as alternative means of measuring scholarly impact. Such indices assume that scholars in fact populate online social environments, and interact with scholarly products there. We tested this assumption by examining the use and coverage of social media environments amongst a sample of bibliometricians. As expected, coverage varied: 82% of articles published by sampled bibliometricians were included in Mendeley libraries, while only 28% were included in CiteULike. Mendeley bookmarking was moderately correlated (.45) with Scopus citation. Over half of respondents asserted that social media tools were affecting their professional lives, although uptake of online tools varied widely. 68% of those surveyed had LinkedIn accounts, while Academia.edu, Mendeley, and ResearchGate each claimed a fifth of respondents. Nearly half of those responding had Twitter accounts, which they used both personally and professionally. Surveyed bibliometricians had mixed opinions on altmetrics' potential; 72% valued download counts, while a third saw potential in tracking articles' influence in blogs, Wikipedia, reference managers, and social media. Altogether, these findings suggest that some online tools are seeing substantial use by bibliometricians, and that they present a potentially valuable source of impact data.
Bibliometrics and altmetrics literature review
Performance Measurement and Metrics, 2017
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the evolution in notions from bibliometrics to altmetrics and confront them taking into consideration specific criteria. The objective of this paper is to present the evolution of research, regarding the above fields, the study of metrics and indicators used, and the strength and weaknesses resulting from the current literature. Furthermore, the authors present the manipulation techniques for both fields as their main weakness, as well as further key points, analyzing the alternative options of bibliometrics and altmetrics. Design/methodology/approach First, the authors present the evolution of the literature, concerning the specific field and metrics used, following with a brief description of basic indicators related to the field of bibliometrics (journal impact factor (JIF), eigenfactor, article influence score and h-index) discussing their advantages and disadvantages. In the second part, the authors describe altmetrics and present...
An Emerging Trend on Measuring Scholarly Publications in Altmetrics
This paper attempt the scholar to create awareness about Altmetrics.There is an exponential growth in the number of research outputs published annually. The traditional measures of research quality, peer review, journal impact factor and citation counts are unreliable and slow to accumulate. Although these measures have helped the librarians to filter the quality content and serving as indication for the value of journal titles, but show weakness when applied to the rapidly evolving scholarly publication. The increase in open access publications makes research easier to access than ever before. The social media tools enabled authors to refer papers online and discuss the contents over the network. Altmetrics, a new approach in this digital era to determining the quality of research more quickly.
An extensive analysis of the presence of different altmetric indicators provided by Altmetric.com across scientific fields is presented, particularly focusing on their relationship with citations. Our results confirm that the presence and density of social media altmetric counts are still very low and not very frequent among scientific publications, with 15%-24% of the publications presenting some altmetric activity and concentrating in the most recent publications, although their presence is increasing over time. Publications from the social sciences, humanities and the medical and life sciences show the highest presence of altmetrics, indicating their potential value and interest for these fields. The analysis of the relationships between altmetrics and citations confirms previous claims of positive correlations but relatively weak, thus supporting the idea that altmetrics do not reflect the same concept of impact as citations. Also, altmetric counts do not always present a better filtering of highly cited publications than journal citation scores. Altmetrics scores (particularly mentions in blogs) are able to identify highly cited publications with higher levels of precision than journal citation scores (JCS), but they have a lower level of recall. The value of altmetrics as a complementary tool of citation analysis is highlighted, although more research is suggested to disentangle the potential meaning and value of altmetric indicators for research evaluation.