Source-linked AI summary
Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community
Stefanie Haustein, Isabella Peters, Judit Bar-Ilan, Jason Priem, Hadas Shema, Jens Terliesner
TL;DR
The study asks whether social-media platforms are sufficiently used by scholars and cover scholarly literature to support altmetrics. It combines platform-based analysis of bibliometrics publications with a survey of conference attendees, finding strong Mendeley coverage but varied platform uptake and limited generalizability.
Problem
The study addresses limited knowledge about social-media platform coverage and about how researchers use and integrate these tools into their research environments.
Method
The study evaluates bibliometrics literature on social reference managers and surveys attendees of the 2012 STI conference about social-media use and professional influence.
Results
82% overall coverage of sampled bibliometrics documents on Mendeley and varied social-media uptake among surveyed bibliometricians indicate substantial but uneven use of online tools.
Takeaways & Limitations
Social-media platforms, particularly Mendeley, may provide valuable broader impact data alongside citation analysis, but older-document bias must be considered.
Takeaways & Limitations
The study’s specific sample and potential non-response bias limit the generalizability of its results.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
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.
Conference Topic
The conference topic list includes data sources for scientometric studies and webometrics.
- The list names “Old and New Data Sources for Scientometric Studies: Coverage, Accuracy and Reliability” as Topic 2.
- The list names Webometrics as Topic 7.
- The listed themes concern data sources, coverage, accuracy, reliability, and webometrics.
Introduction
The introduction frames altmetrics as social-media-based alternatives for measuring scholarly impact while noting limits of citation analysis and earlier usage-based approaches. The study examines platform coverage and bibliometricians’ social-media use through literature analysis and a survey.
- Altmetrics use activity on social-media platforms as an alternative means of measuring scholarly impact.
- Citation analysis provides a limited picture of scholarly impact, motivating broader measures of scholarly use.
- Altmetrics platforms can provide scalable usage data through Web APIs, although accuracy remains a problem.
- The study evaluates the representativeness and validity of altmetrics by examining peer-reviewed publications and bibliometricians’ platform use and perceptions.
- A two-sided approach assesses bibliometric literature on social platforms and surveys bibliometricians about platform users, purposes, and routines.
Altmetrics Literature Review
The study examines how bibliometricians use social media and reference-management platforms, and what these sources may contribute to scholarly-impact evaluation. Findings show substantial but uneven platform coverage and adoption, with varied professional uses and mixed views of altmetrics.
- Coverage and adoption: 82% of 1,136 sampled bibliometrics documents had at least one Mendeley bookmark, compared with 28% in CiteULike.Older coverage was lower: 44% of 85 pre-1990 sample articles had Mendeley readers.
- Coverage and adoption: 77.1% of respondents had heard of Mendeley, but only 25.7% used it; CiteULike awareness was 72.9%, with 12.9% actual users.Among users, Mendeley connected literature management with social connections, whereas CiteULike was mainly used for literature search.
- Social-media use: Social-network profiles were common on Facebook (73.2%), LinkedIn (67.6%), Twitter (43.7%), and Google+ (39.4%), while research-focused platforms each had about one-fifth of users.Mendeley had 23.9% of respondents, and Academia.edu and ResearchGate each had 21.1%.
- Social-media use: LinkedIn primarily supported professional contacts: 84.8% used it for that purpose, 54.3% for visibility, and 43.5% for distributing professional information.Twitter and Facebook were mostly private, although Twitter also supported professional connection, information distribution, and visibility.
- Publication profiles: 32 participants listed publications on at least one profile platform; Google Scholar Citations was most popular, mainly for checking citations.ResearcherID followed, while Academia.edu, Mendeley, and ResearchGate were mostly used to add missing publications.
- Evaluation and professional effects: 85.9% believed altmetrics had potential for evaluation, with downloads or views most favored at 71.8%; blogs, Wikipedia, reference managers, and Web 2.0 discussions each received about one-third support.The study also reports mixed professional effects: information finding and organization improved for some, while others reported increased workload or interference.
Conclusions and Outlook
The study finds that bibliometrics literature is well represented on Mendeley, while social-media uptake among surveyed bibliometricians remains uneven and modest. These findings support altmetrics as a potentially valuable supplement to traditional evaluation, but the sample and possible non-response bias limit generalizability.
- Conclusions and Outlook: 82% of sampled documents had Mendeley coverage, with higher coverage for recent publications and more readers per document than CiteULike.The study notes that Mendeley’s age bias should be considered when evaluating older documents.
- Conclusions and Outlook: Two-thirds of surveyed bibliometricians had LinkedIn accounts, while Academia.edu, Mendeley, and ResearchGate each had about one-fifth of respondents.Nearly half also had Twitter accounts, which may reflect growth, disproportionate uptake among bibliometricians, or methodological differences.
- Conclusions and Outlook: Only one third of surveyed participants used Mendeley, and their use was rather sporadic despite the high coverage of bibliometrics articles.The authors state that the users generating high reader counts remain unclear.
- Conclusions and Outlook: 85% of surveyed bibliometricians expected at least one altmetrics indicator to become influential in future research evaluation.Around a third expected influence from altmetrics based on blogs, Wikipedia, reference managers, and social media.
- Conclusions and Outlook: The study is not generalizable because its sample is specific and the survey may have been affected by non-response bias.The authors call for systematic analysis across scholarly disciplines to further validate altmetrics as supplements to traditional metrics.