Altmetric’s mission is to help others understand the influence of research online.We collate what people are saying about published research in sources such as the mainstream media, policy... Show moreAltmetric’s mission is to help others understand the influence of research online.We collate what people are saying about published research in sources such as the mainstream media, policy documents, social networks, blogs, and other scholarly and non-scholarly forums to provide a more robust picture of the influence and reach of scholarly work. Altmetric works with some of the biggest publishers, funders, businesses and institutions around the world to deliver this data in an accessible and reliable format.ContentsAltmetrics, Ten Years Later, Euan Adie (Altmetric (founder) & Overton)Reflections on Altmetrics, Gemma Derrick (University of Lancaster), Fereshteh Didegah (Karolinska Institutet & Simon Fraser University), Paul Groth (University of Amsterdam), Cameron Neylon (Curtin University), Jason Priem (Our Research), Shenmeng Xu (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Zohreh Zahedi (Leiden University)Worldwide Awareness and Use of Altmetrics, Yin-Leng Theng (Nanyang Technological University)Leveraging Machine Learning on Altmetrics Big Data, Saeed-Ul Hassan (Information Technology University), Naif R. Aljohani (King Abdulaziz University), Timothy D. Bowman (Wayne State University)Altmetrics as Social-Spatial Sensors, Vanash M. Patel (West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust), Robin Haunschild (Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research), Lutz Bornmann (Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society)Altmetric’s Fable of the Hare and the Tortoise, Mike Taylor (Digital Science)The Future of Altmetrics: A Community Vision, Liesa Ross (Altmetric), Stacy Konkiel (Altmetric)https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/170 Show less
As bibliographic reference managers like Mendeley made their data openly available, it became possible to track where in the world research was being saved from. This data offered the opportunity... Show moreAs bibliographic reference managers like Mendeley made their data openly available, it became possible to track where in the world research was being saved from. This data offered the opportunity to better understand how research circulates at a global scale with measures that go beyond citations. This paper explores this circulation by studying fluctuations in rankings between countries when they are based on mean normalized citation scores (MNCS) or on mean normalized Mendeley readership scores (MNRS). Results show that both indicators are moderately correlated at the country level, but that countries from the Global South (namely African and South American countries) perform better when ranked by Mendeley readership than by citations. In addition, publications from South America and Africa tend to have a lower citation impact compared to those from Europe and North America, even when compared with publications that have the same number of readers. These results suggest that the indicator chosen (i.e., citations or Mendeley readers) creates different (dis)advantages among scholarly actors (e.g. countries, research organizations, journals, etc.). It also hints at the need to establish evaluation frameworks that consider that different metrics play different roles across institutional and geographical boundaries. We conclude by proposing further ways of exploring these metrics. Show less
Wouters, P.F.; Zahedi, Z.; Costas Comesana, R. 2019
The availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities. Indicators derived from these... Show moreThe availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities. Indicators derived from these online interactions reflect aspects such as how often, by whom, and when are scholarly publications mentioned and discussed on social media platforms. These new indicators, popularly known as altmetrics and more technically referred as social media metrics are usually proposed as potential alternatives to citation-based indicators to inform research evaluation. The research presented in this book provides the state of the art in the possibilities of social media metrics for informing research evaluation. The main ambition is to increase the knowledge and understanding of the limitations, challenges, and actual possibilities of social media metrics for research evaluation. This thesis describes the presence and distribution of different social media metrics across scientific publications and their relationship with traditional impact indicators. It further describes the main characteristics of publications mentioned in Mendeley as one of the main social media metrics platforms. Moreover, critical challenges regarding data quality issues of social media data are thoroughly described and discussed. Finally, some possibilities and applications of social media metrics for informing research evaluation are presented. Show less
The field of altmetrics has grown impressively since its inception in 2010 with the Altmetrics Manifesto (Priem, Taraborelli, Groth, & Neylon, 2010). We now have regular altmetric conferences... Show moreThe field of altmetrics has grown impressively since its inception in 2010 with the Altmetrics Manifesto (Priem, Taraborelli, Groth, & Neylon, 2010). We now have regular altmetric conferences where academic and commercial data analysts and providers meet. A number of non-profit and for-profit platforms provide altmetric data and summarize these data in visually appealing presentations. This growth of altmetrics is partly fueled by the problems encountered in both peer review and indicator-based assessments of scientific activities, and also by the easy availability of novel types of digital data on publication and communication behavior of researchers and scholars. In this paper, we review and reflect on the state of the art with respect to these new altmetric data and indicators in the context of the evaluation of scientific and scholarly performance. Show less
In this paper we present a first large-scale analysis of the relationship between Mendeley readership and citation counts with particular documents’ bibliographic characteristics. A data set of 1.3... Show moreIn this paper we present a first large-scale analysis of the relationship between Mendeley readership and citation counts with particular documents’ bibliographic characteristics. A data set of 1.3 million publications from different fields published in journals covered by the Web of Science (WoS) has been analyzed. This work reveals that document types that are often excluded from citation analysis due to their lower citation values, like editorial materials, letters, news items, or meeting abstracts, are strongly covered and saved in Mendeley, suggesting that Mendeley readership can reliably inform the analysis of these document types. Findings show that collaborative papers are frequently saved in Mendeley, which is similar to what is observed for citations. The relationship between readership and the length of titles and number of pages, however, is weaker than for the same relationship observed for citations. The analysis of different disciplines also points to different patterns in the relationship between several document characteristics, readership, and citation counts. Overall, results highlight that although disciplinary differences exist, readership counts are related to similar bibliographic characteristics as those related to citation counts, reinforcing the idea that Mendeley readership and citations capture a similar concept of impact, although they cannot be considered as equivalent indicators. Show less
This paper presents a fine-grained overview of the usage behavior and topics of interest of different types of users in Mendeley. The analysis is based on 1.2 million Web of Science indexed... Show moreThis paper presents a fine-grained overview of the usage behavior and topics of interest of different types of users in Mendeley. The analysis is based on 1.2 million Web of Science indexed publications published in 2012. The disciplinary differences in the reading (saving) patterns of different types of Mendeley users are identified and depicted using VOSviewer overlay visualizations. The findings show that compared to other fields, publications from Mathematics & Computer Science have the lowest coverage in Mendeley. Publications from the Social Sciences & Humanities receive on average the highest number of readers in Mendeley. The highest uptake of Mendeley is by students, but this differs across fields. Professors, students, and librarians are mainly active in the Social Sciences & Humanities, a field of science with a relatively low citation density in Web of Science. In contrast, researchers and other professionals are mainly active in fields with a relatively high citation density such as the Biomedical & Health Sciences and the Life & Earth Sciences. In addition, it seems that researchers and professionals are relatively more interested in practical, methodological, and technical oriented topics while professors and students are attracted by the more educational and theoretical oriented topics. These different usage patterns among user types possibly reflect the way in which scholarly publications are used for scientific, educational, or other professional purposes. This information could inform relevant stakeholders, such as researchers, librarians, publishers, funders, and policy makers of the scientific, educational, or professional values of publications. Show less
The data collection and reporting approaches of four major altmetric data aggregators are studied. The main aim of this study is to understand how differences in social media tracking and data... Show moreThe data collection and reporting approaches of four major altmetric data aggregators are studied. The main aim of this study is to understand how differences in social media tracking and data collection methodologies can have effects on the analytical use of altmetric data. For this purpose, discrepancies in the metrics across aggregators have been studied in order to understand how the methodological choices adopted by these aggregators can explain the discrepancies found. Our results show that different forms of accessing the data from diverse social media platforms, together with different approaches of collecting, processing, summarizing, and updating social media metrics cause substantial differences in the data and metrics offered by these aggregators. These results highlight the importance that methodological choices in the tracking, collecting, and reporting of altmetric data can have in the analytical value of the data. Some recommendations for altmetric users and data aggregators are proposed and discussed. Show less
Twitter users tweeting scholarly publications from different countries have been analysed. The aim is to explore how visible are different countries on Twitter (based on their self-assigned geo... Show moreTwitter users tweeting scholarly publications from different countries have been analysed. The aim is to explore how visible are different countries on Twitter (based on their self-assigned geo-locations obtained from altmetric.com) in comparison to their output size in the Web of Science. Some indicators such as Twitter presence and activity (such as number of user’s accounts, number of tweets, and number of publications tweeted) have been analysed for each country. Finally, the relationship between Twitter activity indicators and some demographic indicators (such as country’s population, education, internet users, ICT use and access) will be explored and potential factors affecting country’s activity on Twitter will be discussed. Exploring how technological access and development (technology orientation) of a country affects its scholarly twitter usage (scientific orientation) will help in interpreting country’s activity and in understanding the reasons why some countries are underrepresented on Twitter. Identification of such factors could help in gaining some insights on important barriers and limitations that may have an effect on usage of scholarly social media platforms by users from different countries and on considering ‘altmetric divide’ for any altmetrics applications at the country level. Show less
The country of authors of 5,9 million Web of Science (WoS) publications with DOI from the years 2012 to 2015 have been compared with the country of Twitter users tweeting these WoS publications in... Show moreThe country of authors of 5,9 million Web of Science (WoS) publications with DOI from the years 2012 to 2015 have been compared with the country of Twitter users tweeting these WoS publications in order to study the main scholarly users of Twitter across 10 different countries. For this purpose, the visibility of country’s publications in the WoS and geographical distribution of Twitter users tweeting WoS publications have been analysed. The aim is to study how do they differ and what are their preference in tweeting their own vs. other country’s publication. The findings show that in general, US and UK with the highest proportion of outputs in the WoS, are among the main users of Twitter as well. Moreover, except for US, users tweet publications affiliated to other country more than those from their own country. Also, similar to WoS, it seems that altmetric providers are not free of international biases in their coverage and collection of metrics. Finally, various possible reasons on why publications from some countries attract more Twitter users than others have been discussed. Show less
Zahedi, Z.; Haustein, S.; Larivière, V.; Costas Comesana, R. 2016
