Introducing the ‘alt-index’ for measuring the social visibility of scientific research

Saeed-Ul Hassan (), Sehrish Iqbal (), Naif R. Aljohani (), Salem Alelyani () and Alesia Zuccala ()
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Saeed-Ul Hassan: Information Technology University
Sehrish Iqbal: Information Technology University
Naif R. Aljohani: King Abdulaziz University
Salem Alelyani: King Khalid University
Alesia Zuccala: University of Copenhagen

Scientometrics, 2020, vol. 123, issue 3, No 16, 1407-1419

Abstract: Abstract We propose a new metric called ‘alt-index’, which is analagous to the h-index, but uses altmetrics data to measure both the volume and social media activity of scientific literature. The dataset includes over 1.1 million papers and their associated altmetrics score. A correlation analysis of the h-index and alt-index is conducted at three different levels: field level, source (journal) level, and author level. Our results show a strong positive correlation between the two indexes across all levels. We conclude that the alt-index can be adopted to measure the social activity of publications in situations where there is agreement amongst various social media channels.

Keywords: Alt-index; Altmetrics; H-index; Social media activity; Scientific research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03447-z

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