Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community

Stefanie Haustein (), Isabella Peters (), Judit Bar-Ilan (), Jason Priem (), Hadas Shema () and Jens Terliesner ()
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Stefanie Haustein: Université de Montréal, Montréal (Canada) and Science-Metrix
Isabella Peters: Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
Judit Bar-Ilan: Bar-Ilan University
Jason Priem: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Hadas Shema: Bar-Ilan University
Jens Terliesner: Heinrich Heine University

Scientometrics, 2014, vol. 101, issue 2, No 15, 1145-1163

Abstract: Abstract 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 in the social web. We tested this assumption by examining the use and coverage of social media environments amongst a sample of bibliometricians examining both their own use of online platforms and the use of their papers on social reference managers. 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 counts. We conducted a survey among the participants of the STI2012 participants. 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.

Keywords: Altmetrics; Social media presence; Reference managers; Download counts; Citation counts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-013-1221-3

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