Altmetric Blog

In this post, Stacy Konkiel, Director of Research Relations at Altmetric, gathers and categorizes the altmetrics related research that published this year.

In 2018, the amount of Altmetric-related research that we’re aware of tripled. Typically, this research is quantitative in nature and offers new insights about the way research is communicated.

Here, I’ve collected and categorized all 80+ known articles, preprints and conference proceedings published in 2018 that analyze Altmetric data.

We’re proud to continue to support scientometrics researchers worldwide by offering access to our data, free of charge–something we’ve done since Altmetric was founded in 2011.

If you’re interested in gaining free access to Altmetric’s data for use in your own noncommercial research, check out our Research Data Access Program.

Structures of science

These studies investigate how certain kinds of research (e.g. preprints vs articles) are communicated and shared online, and the relationship of altmetrics to other indicators.

• Co‐saved, co‐tweeted, and co‐cited networks
• Alt-Index: A proposed Index for measuring the Social Activity of Scientific Research
• Exploiting Social Networks of Twitter in Altmetrics Big Data
• Academic information on Twitter: A user survey
• Using altmetrics for contextualised mapping of societal impact: from hits to networks
• Altmetric Scores, Citations, and Publication of Studies Posted as Preprints
• Altmetric scores: An early indicator of research impact
• Allegation of scientific misconduct increases Twitter attention
• What Can Altmetric.com Tell Us About Policy Citations of Research? An Analysis of Altmetric.com Data for Research Articles from the University of Sheffield
• Who says what about the most-discussed articles of Altmetric?
• Social media uptake of academic publications: Differences due to availability, subject and demographic parameters
• Zenodo in the Spotlight of Traditional and New Metrics
• Scientific vs. Public Attention: A Comparison of Top Cited Papers in WoS and Top Papers by Altmetric Score
• A correlation comparison between Altmetric Attention Scores and citations for six PLOS journals
• Do altmetrics correlate with the quality of papers? A large-scale empirical study based on F1000Prime data    

Regional studies

These studies look at how the countries or regions where research is being shared and published affect their altmetrics.

• Local chatter or international buzz? Language differences on posts about Zika research on Twitter and Facebook
• 알트메트릭스를 이용한 SSCI 등재 한국 저널의 온라인 소셜 플랫폼에서의 영향력에 관한 연구  / An Exploratory Study of Impact of SSCI-Listed Korean Journals in Online Social Platforms Using Altmetrics
• An altmetric investigation of the online visibility of South Korea-based scientific journals
• Global mapping of scientific information exchange using altmetric data
• The altmetric performance of publications authored by Brazilian researchers: analysis of CNPq productivity scholarship holders
• Can Twitter increase the visibility of Chinese publications?
• [Analyzing the social impact of orthodontic articles published by Chinese authors in international journals during the past five years]
• Research evaluation of Asian countries using altmetrics: comparing South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and China

• Difference in the impact of open-access papers published by China and the USA
• On the differences between citations and altmetrics: An investigation of factors driving altmetrics versus citations for finnish articles
• Altmetrics: “big data” that map the influence of New Zealand research

Disciplinary studies

Though the below studies include findings specific to certain disciplines, many may have implications beyond disciplinary boundaries.

• Do traditional scientometric indicators predict social media activity on scientific knowledge? An analysis of the ecological literature
• Prevalence of Disclosed Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research and Associations With Journal Impact Factors and Altmetric Scores
• Alternative Metrics of Scholarly Output: The Relationship among Altmetric Score, Mendeley Reader Score, Citations, and Downloads in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery   
• Social Media and the Dissemination of Research: Insights from the Most Widely Circulated Articles in Plastic Surgery
• The Social Effects of Exergames on Older Adults: Systematic Review and Metric Analysis
• Altmetric analysis of contemporary dental literature
• A comparison of matched interim analysis publications and final analysis publications oncology clinical trials
• Impact of Social Media on Engagement with American Thoracic Society Journals
• Measuring the Social Impact of Nursing Research: An Insight into Altmetrics
• Dissemination of evidence in paediatric emergency medicine: a quantitative descriptive evaluation of a 16-week social media promotion
• The Adoption of an Online Journal Club to Improve Research Dissemination and Social Media Engagement Among Hospitalists
• Why highly cited articles are not highly tweeted? A biology case
• Altmetrics should not be used for ranking of anaesthesia journals
• Disciplinary differences of the impact of altmetric
• The most mentioned neurointervention articles in online media: a bibliometric analysis of the top 101 articles with the highest altmetric attention scores
• Looking Beyond Traditional Metrics in Orthodontics: An Altmetric Study on the Most Discussed Articles on the Web
• #MedEd: exploring the relationship between altmetrics and traditional measures of dissemination in health professions education
• Twitter Mentions and Academic Citations in the Urology Literature
• Correlation of Altmetric Attention Score With Article Citations in Cardiovascular Research
• Characterizing High-Performing Articles by Altmetric Score in Major Cardiovascular Journals
• The Value of Clinical Colorectal Cancer Registries in Colorectal Cancer Research: A Systematic Review
• The Impact and Outreach of Soundscape Research     
• Does the public discuss other topics on climate change than researchers? A comparison of networks based on author keywords and hashtags
• Enhancing Climate Change Research With Open Science
• The differential impact of scientific quality, bibliometric factors, and social media activity on the influence of systematic reviews and meta-analyses about psoriasis    
• Relationships between abstract features and methodological quality explained variations of social media activity derived from systematic reviews about psoriasis interventions
• A Comparative Investigation on Citation Counts and Altmetrics Between Papers Authored by Top Universities and Companies in the Research Field of Artificial Intelligence
• Making headlines: An analysis of US government-funded cancer research mentioned in online media
• An examination of the effect of open versus paywalled access publication on the disseminative impact and citation count of publications in intensive care medicine and anesthesia
• Highly visible sepsis publications from 2012 to 2017: Analysis and comparison of altmetrics and bibliometrics
• #Psychology: a bibliometric analysis of psychological literature in the online media
• Tweeting Library and Information Science: a socio-topical distance analysis
• Tweet success? Scientific communication correlates with increased citations in Ecology and Conservation
• Impact of Low Back Pain Clinical Trials Measured by the Altmetric Score: Cross-Sectional Study
• Bibliometric and Altmetric Analysis of Three Social Science Disciplines    
• Top-Cited Articles In Medical Professionalism: A Bibliometric Analysis versus Altmetric Scores    
• Gender differences in scientific productivity and visibility in core neurosurgery journals: Citations and social media metrics
• Measuring the online attention of the Rehabilitation Web of Science category: an Altmetrics-based analysis
• Altmetric Prevalence in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities: Where are the Online Discussions?
• Wikipedia as a gateway to biomedical research: The relative distribution and use of citations in the English Wikipedia
• Exploring prestigious citations sourced from top universities in bibliometrics and altmetrics: a case study in the computer science discipline
• Harnessing Altmetric Data for Translational Research & Community Development: A Case Study
• Using new metrics to evaluate digital communications impact on OSH stakeholder’s communities online
• Altmetrics for the Journals of Politics : Correlating Altmetrics with Journal Metrics
• The effect of infographic promotion on research dissemination and readership: a randomized control trial
• ¿Las correlaciones altmétricas/métricas tradicionales se ven afectadas por los planes de marketing en medios sociales de las revistas? El caso de la revista Comunicar  
• Exploiting Social Networks of Twitter in Altmetrics Big Data
• Altmetric Versus Bibliometric Perspective Regarding Publication Impact and Force

Open Access

Though citation advantages for open access research have been widely studied, the relationship between open access and altmetrics is less understood. These studies offer insight into a burgeoning topic of analysis.

• The Visibility of Open Access Monographs in a European Context: A report prepared by Knowledge Unlatched Research
• Identifying diffusion patterns of research articles on Twitter: A case study of online engagement with open access articles
• Do altmetrics promote Open Access? An exploratory analysis on altmetric differences between types of access in the field of Physics
• Identifying diffusion patterns of research articles on Twitter: A case study of online engagement with open access articles
• Assessing the open access effect in hybrid journals
• Difference in the impact of open-access papers published by China and the USA
• Metrics and Altmetrics: an exploratory study of a possible correlation between the most cited papers in open and restricted access in 2016-2018

Altmetrics studies

These studies look critically at altmetrics data sources and the calculation of new metrics based on altmetrics data.

• Could scientists use Altmetric.com scores to predict longer term citation counts?
• General discussion of data quality challenges in social media metrics: Extensive comparison of four major altmetric data aggregators & Challenges in the quality of social media data across altmetric data aggregators
• Normalization of zero-inflated data: An empirical analysis of a new indicator family and its use with altmetrics data
• The insoluble problems of books: What does Altmetric.com have to offer?
• Reliability and accuracy of altmetric providers: a comparison among Altmetric.com, PlumX and Crossref Event Data
• Differences between Altmetric Data Sources – A Case Study
• Field- and time-normalization of data with many zeros: an empirical analysis using citation and Twitter data
• Cross-metric compatability and inconsistencies of altmetrics
• Studying the Velocity Index for various Altmetric.com data sources

Inspired to do your own altmetrics research?

Apply for our Research Data Access Program to get free access to quantitative and qualitative data that illustrates how millions of research outputs are shared and discussed online.

Curious about the research we’ve supported in the past? Check out our 2015, 2016, and 2017 research roundups.