Altmetrics are a group of alternative metrics that capture mentions made to scientific papers on social networks, news sites and blogs; policies and patents; Wikipedia, and other sources to assess the impact of publications on the social web. A study using journals and articles from the SciELO network in Latin America was carried out to qualify the web presence of Latin American research results and explore the potential of altmetrics. … Read More →
Posting preprints before peer review is associated with increased visibility and citation of published articles
The communication of research results through preprints has been increasing significantly, as by the increasing number of manuscripts deposited on bioRxiv, the preprint server for biology and life sciences. However, only a small fraction of the research papers indexed in PubMed started as preprints in bioRxiv. But what would undecided authors about preprints say if they knew that articles that have associated preprints have a 49% higher Altmetric index and 36% more citations? This is what shows a recent study published in eLife. … Read More →
Web presence and social media metrics from articles shared on Twitter – Interview with Stefanie Haustein
Knowing how and by whom articles are shared on social media can help the challenging task of qualifying alternative metrics indicators. In this interview, Stefanie Haustein, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Information Studies in Canada and co-director of the ScholCommLab, addresses the role of social networks such as Twitter as a data source for altmetrics. She also looks at the role journals play in the dissemination of their articles on Twitter and investigates how scholarly articles from Brazil and Brazilian Twitter users tweet about scholarly outputs. … Read More →
Journals’ presence and impact on the social web: Towards the social media impact factor
The routine practice of evaluating the journal Impact Factor to determine where to submit a manuscript has been reconsidered to the detriment of the social impact of the journal in the relationship that the journal establishes with the scientific community and the public. Social media metrics act in this direction by measuring the journal social media impact factor which may assist in managing the journals’ web presence in the profiles kept on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. … Read More →
Discussing indicators in research funding: What role do altmetrics play? [Originally published in Europe of Knowledge blog in December/2017]
At any rate, altmetrics, or alternative metrics, are gaining momentum in higher education. This post is based on my master’s thesis that explores the usage of altmetrics with a focus on research funding. Altmetrics track down and count the mentions of scholarly outputs in social media, news sites, policy papers, and social bookmarking sites. Then altmetrics data providers aggregate the number of mentions. This allows an observation of how many times research has been viewed, discussed, followed, shared, and downloaded. … Read More →
Academic journals with a presence on Twitter are more widely disseminated and receive a higher number of citations [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in December/2017]
Previous research has shown that researchers’ active participation on Twitter can be a powerful way of promoting and disseminating academic outputs and improving the prospects of increased citations. But does the same hold true for the presence of academic journals on Twitter? José Luis Ortega examined the role of 350 scholarly journals, analysing how their articles were tweeted and cited. … Read More →
Is it possible to normalize citation metrics?
Bibliometric indicators represent much more than an indication of the visibility, relevance and impact of an article. A researcher’s entire career profile can be summarized in one or more numerical productivity and impact indicators of his research. However, citation metrics vary considerably according to the area of knowledge, the publication age, the type of document and the coverage of the database where citations were accrued. Is it possible to normalize them? Here we discuss the challenges of this practice. … Read More →
What can alternative metrics – or altmetrics – offer us?
The results and comments in four articles dedicated to altmetrics and published in an issue of EPI are analyzed. They show future possibilities and the real difficulties in the development of a new technique for the measurement of the impact of research based on social networks on the web. … Read More →
What are the Public Library of Science Collections ? – Part II
This post is the second part of the description of the contents of the PLOS Collections. Of the seven collections that makeup PLOS Collections, the Text Mining and Altmetrics collections have been selected for a brief analysis of their contents and their importance to scientometrics and information science, and of the growth of these disciplines that are bolstered by free access to full text. … Read More →
What are the Public Library of Science Collections ? – Part I
The PLOS Collections contain selected documents published in open access in seven subject disciplines. The contents and importance of these collections to the past, present and future of open access is briefly presented, as well as the growth of the disciplines of Text Mining and Altmetrics, stimulated by the open access to full text. … Read More →
Article downloads: An alternative indicator of national research impact and cross-sector knowledge exchange – Originally published on the Elsevier newsletter “Research Trends Issue 36”
Download data can be used in research assessment to offer a different perspective on national research impact, and to give a unique view of knowledge exchange between authors and readers in the academic and corporate sectors. … Read More →
Interview with William Gunn
Mendeley, the service for managing and sharing scholarly articles, is an innovative tool that makes up the new modus operandi of scholarly communication based on networks of researchers. Mendeley was acquired by the commercial publisher Elsevier which guarantees, however, to keep it free to use. … Read More →
Interview with Euan Adie, CEO of altmetric.com
Altmetrics is something that cannot be ignored. Based on the online monitoring of social networks in order to track the impact of academic publications, this new field is experiencing a rapid surge in interest. In an interview given exclusively to the SciELO in Perspectives blog, various aspects of Altmetrics are addressed by Euan Adie – CEO of altmetric.com. Euan will also be one of the speakers at the SciELO 15 Years Conference. … Read More →
Altmetrics, Alternative metrics and Alternative measurements: new perspectives on the visibility and impact of scientific research
Altmetrics is a new field which measures the interactions that occur on the Web on the part of users about research results. Sibele Fausto follows up on the post of Atila Iamarino and comments on the repositioning of the invisible colleges in social networks which has resulted in an intensified exchange of information and debate of ideas, whose metrics point to the interest stimulated by scientific works. … Read More →
You do the sharing, I “like” it and we create the metrics
The approach instinctively adopted by users of social networks to share articles leaves trails which are tracked almost immediately by metrics which give some indication of their future value as an information source. This is in complete contrast to citation based metrics which can take months or even years to be calculated. Atila Iamarino speaks to us about “The Wisdom of Crowds” as it takes place in real time. … Read More →
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