Journal of Information and Knowledge (Formerly SRELS Journal of Information Management)

Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access
Open Access Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Restricted Access Subscription Access

Altmetrics:Six Years of Changing Scholarly Appraisal


Affiliations
1 Raghunathpur College, P.O. Raghunathpur, Purulia − 723 133, West Bengal, India
2 Department of Library and Information Science, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore − 721 102, West Bengal, India
     

   Subscribe/Renew Journal


The last decade of the 20th century was marked as the opening gateway to internet and communication revolution, which added new dimensions to information and knowledge society.  The scholarly community of today’s knowledge society communicates between each other in a non-traditional way besides the traditional way. The arrival of web 2.0 and scientists’ gradual use of said platforms as tools for the diffusion and receipt of scientific information and with part of the scientific community relatively receptive, that scientometrics 2.0 began to be discussed.  Another milestone in the era of scientometrics 2.0 is the ‘Wikimetrics’. After the ‘Wikimetrics’ next footprint comes with the advent of ‘Article-level metrics’. Article-level metrics followed by Altmetrics, i.e. Alternative Metrics. The term altmetrics was coined by Jason Priem in 2010, as a generalization of article level metrics, and ischolar_mained in the twitter #altmetrics hashtag. Although altmetrics usually functions as metrics about articles, but it can also be applied to people, journals, books, data sets, presentations, videos, source code repositories, web pages, etc. Altmetrics does not cover just citation counts, but also other aspects of the impact of a work, such as how many data and knowledge bases refer to it, article views, download, or mentions in social media and news media. In this paper, the altmetric scores of top-cited altmetric papers are presented. Also, the contents of the same are analysed and presented. It is interesting to note that all top-cited papers appeared from diverse subject domains, i.e. big data in science, biological science, medical science, research methodology, social studies, citation studies and scientometrics, different issues involved in social networking et al. The subject domain altmetrics is a highly interdisciplinary field covering all major areas of universe of knowledge. This study reflects other notable feature, i.e. the discord between traditional metric (times cited) and modern metric (altmetric score). 


Keywords

Altmetrics, Altmetric Score, Article-Level Metrics, AS/TC Ratio, Citation Count, Content Analysis, Informetrics, Open Source Metrics, Scholarly Appraisal, Scientometrics, Wikimetrics.
User
About The Authors

Dyuti Samanta
Raghunathpur College, P.O. Raghunathpur, Purulia − 723 133, West Bengal
India

Asst. Professor; Dept. of Library and Information Science

Bidyarthi Dutta
Department of Library and Information Science, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore − 721 102, West Bengal
India

LibrarianRaghunathpur CollegeP.O. RaghunathpurPurulia 723 133, West Bengal, India & Research ScholarDept. of Library and Information ScienceVidyasagar University, MidnaporeW.B. Indiae-mail: dsamantalis@gmail.comMobile: 91-8768780077


Notifications

  • Borgman, C.L. (1989). Bibliometrics and Scholarly Communication Editor’s Introduction. Communication Research, 16(5):583-99. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365089016005002.

  • Shema, Hadas, Judit Bar‐Ilan, and Mike Thelwall. (2014). Do Blog Citations Correlate with a Higher Number of Future Citations? Research Blogs as a Potential Source for Alternative Metrics. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(5):1018-27. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23037.

  • Priem, Jason, et. al. (2010). Altmetrics: A Manifesto.

  • Metrics. (2016). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric.

  • Metrics. (2016). http://www.merriam-webster.com/.

  • Wittig, G.R. (1978). Statistical Bibliography - A Historical Footnote. Journal of Documentation, 34(3):240-41. https:// doi.org/10.1108/eb026662.

  • Cole, F.J. and Eales, N.B. (1917). The History of Comparative Anatomy Part 1: A Statistical Analysis of the Literature. Science Progress, 11:578-96.

  • Hulme, E.W. (1923). Statistical Bibliography in Relation to the Growth of Modern Civilization, London: Grafton.

  • Rao, I.K.R. (1998). Informetrics: Scope, Definition, Methodology and Conceptual Questions, Workshop on Informetrics and Scientometrics, 16-19 March, Bangalore, organized by Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute.

  • Pritchad, A. (1969). Statistical Bibliography and Bibliometrics. Journal of Documentation, 25(4):348-49.

  • Hood, W.W. and Wilson, C.S. (2001). The Literature of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics and Informetrics. Scientometrics, 52(2):291-314. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017919924342.

  • Nalimov, V.V. and Mulchenko, Z.M. (1969). Naukometriya. Izuchenie Razvitiya Nauki kak Informatsionnogo Protsessa. [Scientometrics Study of the Development of Science as an Information Process], Nauka, Moscow, (English translation 1971) Washington, D.C.: Foreign Technology Division. U.S. Air Force Systems Command, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. (NTIS Report No.AD735-634).

  • Nacke, O. (1979). Informetric: Ein nuer Name fuer eine Disziplin. Nachrichten fuer Dokumentation, 30(6):219-26.

  • Rajan, T.N. and Sen, B.K. (1986). An Essay on Informetrics: a Study in Growth and Development. Annals of Library Science and Documentation, 33(1-2):1-12.

  • Brookes, B.C. (1990). Biblio-, Sciento-, Infor-metrics??? What are we talking about? In: L. Egghe and R. Rousseau (Eds.), Informetrics 89/90. Selection of Papers Submitted for the Second International Conference on Bibliometrics, Scientometrics and Informetrics, Amsterdam: Elsevier, p. 31-43.

  • Priem, J. Altmetrics. (2014). Beyond Bibliometrics: Harnessing Multidimensional Indicators of Scholarly Impact, 263-88.

  • Priem, Jason and Bradely H. (2010). Hemminger. Scientometrics 2.0: New Metrics of Scholarly Impact on the Social Web. First Monday, 15(7). https://doi.org/10.5210/ fm.v15i7.2874.

  • Thelwall, Michael. (2009). Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative Web Research for the Social Sciences. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, 1(1):1-116.

  • Zhang, Y. (2012). Comparison of Select Reference Management Tools. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 31(1):45-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2012.64184 1. PMid:22289095.

  • Li, X., Thelwall, M. and Giustini, D. (2012). Validating Online Reference Managers for Scholarly Impact Measurement. Scientometrics, 91(2):461-71. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11192-011-0580-x.

  • Wouters, P. and Costas, R. (2012). Users, Narcissism and Control: Tracking the Impact of Scholarly Publications in the 21st Century. Utrecht: SURF Foundation.

  • Lucas, D.V. (2008). A Product Review of Zotero. Master’s Thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved from: http://ils.unc.edu/MSpapers/3388.pdf.

  • Lewison, G. (2002). From Biomedical Research to Health Improvement. Scientometrics, 54(2):179-92. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016005710371.

  • Kiernan, V. (2003). Diffusion of News about Research. Science Communication, 25(1), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547003255297.

  • Head, A.J., and Eisenberg, M.B. (2010). How Today’s College Students use Wikipeadia for Course Related Research. First Monday, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v15i3.2830.

  • Schweitzer, N.J. (2008). Wikipedia and Psychology: Coverage of Concepts and its use by Undergraduate Students. Teaching of Psychology, 35(2), 81-85. https://doi.org/10.1080/00986280802004594.

  • Nielsen, F. (2007). Scientific Citations in Wikipeadia. First Monday, 12(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v12i8.1997.

  • Priem, J.; Piwowar, H.A. and Hemminger, B.M. (2012). Altmetrics in the Wild: Using Social Media to Explore Scholarly Impact. arXiv: 1203.4745.

  • Eysenbach, G. (2012). Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.2041.

  • Shuai, X.; Pepe, A. and Bollen, J. (2012). How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter mentions, and Citations. arXiv: 1202.2461.

  • 31. Effimova, L. (2009). PhD – Mathemagenic. Mathemagenic.

  • 32. Nielsen, M. (2009). Doing Science Online. Michael Nielsen Blog.

  • Groth, P. and Gurney, T. (2010). Studying Scientific Discourse on the Web using Bibliometrics: A Chemistry Blogging Case Study. Presented at WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, Raleigh, NC.

  • Shema, H. and Bar-Ilan, J. (2011). Characteristics of researchblogging.org Science Blogs and Bloggers. Presented at Altmetrics 11: Tracking Scholarly Impact on the Social Web, An ACM Web Science Conference 2011 workshop, Koblenz, Germany.

  • Perneger, T.V. (2004). Relation between Online “hits counts” and Subsequent Citations: Prospective Study of Research Papers in the BMJ. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 329(7465):546-47. https://doi.org/10.1136/ bmj.329.7465.546. PMid:15345629 PMCid:PMC516105.

  • Waltman, L. and Costas, R. (2013). F1000 Recommendations as a Potential New Data Source for Research Evaluation: A Comparison with Citations. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.


Abstract Views: 453

PDF Views: 25




  • Altmetrics:Six Years of Changing Scholarly Appraisal

Abstract Views: 453  |  PDF Views: 25

Authors

Dyuti Samanta
Raghunathpur College, P.O. Raghunathpur, Purulia − 723 133, West Bengal, India
Bidyarthi Dutta
Department of Library and Information Science, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore − 721 102, West Bengal, India

Abstract


The last decade of the 20th century was marked as the opening gateway to internet and communication revolution, which added new dimensions to information and knowledge society.  The scholarly community of today’s knowledge society communicates between each other in a non-traditional way besides the traditional way. The arrival of web 2.0 and scientists’ gradual use of said platforms as tools for the diffusion and receipt of scientific information and with part of the scientific community relatively receptive, that scientometrics 2.0 began to be discussed.  Another milestone in the era of scientometrics 2.0 is the ‘Wikimetrics’. After the ‘Wikimetrics’ next footprint comes with the advent of ‘Article-level metrics’. Article-level metrics followed by Altmetrics, i.e. Alternative Metrics. The term altmetrics was coined by Jason Priem in 2010, as a generalization of article level metrics, and ischolar_mained in the twitter #altmetrics hashtag. Although altmetrics usually functions as metrics about articles, but it can also be applied to people, journals, books, data sets, presentations, videos, source code repositories, web pages, etc. Altmetrics does not cover just citation counts, but also other aspects of the impact of a work, such as how many data and knowledge bases refer to it, article views, download, or mentions in social media and news media. In this paper, the altmetric scores of top-cited altmetric papers are presented. Also, the contents of the same are analysed and presented. It is interesting to note that all top-cited papers appeared from diverse subject domains, i.e. big data in science, biological science, medical science, research methodology, social studies, citation studies and scientometrics, different issues involved in social networking et al. The subject domain altmetrics is a highly interdisciplinary field covering all major areas of universe of knowledge. This study reflects other notable feature, i.e. the discord between traditional metric (times cited) and modern metric (altmetric score). 


Keywords


Altmetrics, Altmetric Score, Article-Level Metrics, AS/TC Ratio, Citation Count, Content Analysis, Informetrics, Open Source Metrics, Scholarly Appraisal, Scientometrics, Wikimetrics.

References