Altmetric Blog

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

Here, I’ve collected and categorized the 50 known articles, preprints and book chapters published in 2019 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.

We’re also grateful to the researchers who study Altmetric data. Through their work, we can better understand the value of altmetrics in a variety of research assessment contexts. We also use their insights to learn how we can improve.

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2019 research highlights

This year saw a lot of great altmetrics research (a full list of which can be found below), but a few papers are worth highlighting for their important findings and novel approaches to altmetrics analysis:

• Influential tweeters in relation to highly cited articles in altmetric big data: This study applies machine learning techniques to discover a relationship between influential tweeters sharing a work and its likelihood of being highly cited.
• Global mapping of scientific information exchange using altmetric data: Researchers mapped how research was shared on Twitter to learn how research is shared across international borders.
• Predicting Patent Citations to Measure Economic Impact of Scholarly Research: Another machine learning-based study uncovers the altmetric data features that can be used to predict future patent citations.
• The effect of bioRxiv preprints on citations and altmetrics: Preprints deposited to Open Access repository bioRxiv have a higher chance of being better cited and discussed online, according to this (you guessed it!) preprint.
• Disciplinary Variations in Altmetric Coverage of Scholarly Articles: Researchers found huge variance in Altmetric attention for different disciplines and journals, underscoring the importance of using Altmetric data in its disciplinary context when making comparisons.

All 2019 Altmetric-backed topics

In addition to the research highlighted above, a number of other studies were published this year that offer valuable insights into regionality and altmetrics, disciplinarity and altmetrics, the relationship between Open Access and altmetrics, and the quality and uses of altmetric data.

How researchers’ locations affect altmetrics

• Getting to Know Science Tweeters: A Pilot Analysis of South African Twitter Users Tweeting about Research Articles
• Por metricas alternativas mais relevantes para a America Latina
• Estudio metrico de ALFIN en Iberoamerica: de la bibliometria a las altmetrics (Metric Study of Information Literacy in Latin America: From Bibliometrics to Altmetrics)
• Research Excellence in the Era of Online Attention: Altmetrics of South Africa’s Highly Cited Papers in Selected Research Fields
• PENGARUH MEDIA SOSIAL TERHADAP SITASI PUBLIKASI INTERNASIONAL KARYA ILMIAH INDONESIA BIDANG PERTANIAN DENGAN PENDEKATAN ALTMETRICS
• The Relationship Between Institutional Factors, Citation and Altmetric Counts of Publications from Finnish Universities

How altmetrics differ between disciplines and topics

• Altmetric Analysis of Biotin in Scholarly Outputs Following the Biotin FDA Warning
• Mapping social media attention in Microbiology: identifying main topics and actors.
• The most mentioned neuroimaging articles in online media: a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 articles with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores.
• SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE, IMPACT FACTOR, AND MEAN ALTMETRIC ATTENTION SCORES: CHARACTERISTICS AND CORRELATES IN MAJOR CARDIOLOGY JOURNALS
• Tweeting Authors: Impact on Research Publicity and Downstream Citations
• The most mentioned neurointervention articles in online media: a bibliometric analysis of the top 101 articles with the highest altmetric attention scores
• Altmetric analysis of the contemporary scientific literature in Endodontology
• PAST THE TWEET ANALYTICS: IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION, A 10-YEAR TREND
• Making and Measuring an Impact in a Digital World: The Role of Social Media and the Medical Journal
• A comparative analysis of Twitter users who Tweeted on psychology and political science journal articles
• The most influential articles in Helicobacter pylori research: A bibliometric analysis
• A 20-year evaluation of PLAAS research outputs: Impact on the scholarly domain and in social media
• Who shares health and medical scholarly articles on Facebook?
• An effectiveness analysis of altmetrics indices for different levels of artificial intelligence publications
• Performance of citations and altmetrics in the social sciences and humanities
• Research on the impact evaluation of academic journals based on altmetrics and citation indicators
• Mapping the backbone of the Humanities through the eyes of Wikipedia
• Altmetrics, alternative indicators for Web of Science Communication studies journals
• Scientific Landscape of Citizen Science Publications: Dynamics, Content and Presence in Social Media
• Measuring the impact of transformative consumer research: The relational engagement approach as a promising avenue
• Does the public discuss other topics on climate change than researchers? A comparison of explorative networks based on author keywords and hashtags

Is there an altmetrics advantage for Open Access publications?

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.

• Assessing the uptake and reach of open access publishing
• Aligning Social Media Indicators with the Documents in an Open Access Repository
• Evaluation and comparison of influence in international Open Access journals between China and USA

• Do articles in open access journals have more frequent altmetric activity than articles in subscription-based journals? An investigation of the research output of Finnish universities

Looking critically at altmetrics data sources

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

• The effect of bioRxiv preprints on citations and altmetrics
• Towards a second generation of “social media metrics” Characterizing Twitter communities of attention around science
• Blogs and news sources coverage in altmetrics data providers: a comparative analysis by country, language, and subject
• Availability and Audit of Links in Altmetric Data Providers: Link Checking of Blogs and News in Altmetric.com, Crossref Event Data and PlumX
• Differences between Altmetric Data Sources: A Case Study
• Use of a Coordinated Social Media Strategy to Improve Dissemination of Research and Collect Solutions Related to Workforce Gender Equity
• Demography of Altmetrics under the Light of Dimensions: Locations, Institutions, Journals, Disciplines and Funding Bodies in the Global Research Framework
• Disciplinary Variations in Altmetric Coverage of Scholarly Articles
• Mining network-level properties of Twitter altmetrics data
• Who posts scientific tweets? An investigation into the productivity, locations, and identities of scientific tweeters
• Altmetric scores: An early indicator of research impact
• Influential tweeters in relation to highly cited articles in altmetric big data
• Retractions from altmetric and bibliometric perspectives
• Predicting Patent Citations to Measure Economic Impact of Scholarly Research
• Global mapping of scientific information exchange using altmetric data
• Aligning Social Media Indicators with the Documents in an Open Access Repository
• The significant difference in impact
• Scholarly Twitter Metrics
• Assessing the uptake and reach of open access publishing
• Do altmetrics assess societal impact in a comparable way to case studies? An empirical test of the convergent validity of altmetrics based on data from the UK research excellence framework (REF)
• Exploratory analysis of Publons metrics and their relationship with bibliometric and altmetric impact

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Curious about the research we’ve supported in the past? Check out our 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 research roundups.