Altmetric scores: short-term popularity or long-term scientific importance
| Published date | 13 November 2017 |
| Pages | 314-323 |
| Date | 13 November 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-01-2017-0005 |
| Author | Edith Starbuck,Sharon Purtee |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Records management & preservation,Information repositories |
Altmetric scores: short-term
popularity or long-term
scientific importance
Edith Starbuck and Sharon Purtee
Health Sciences Library, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to report on a three-year case study of the extent with which
altmetrics compareto traditional metrics in certain subject areas forselected departments at the University of
Cincinnati,College of Medicine (COM).
Design/methodology/approach –A three-year analysisof peer-reviewed papers and invited editorials
from 2009 to 2013 written by tenure-track faculty from 20 COM departments was done to explore what
subject areas received the highest altmetric scores. Research output was searchedin PubMed; articles were
quantifiedby subject area, times cited in Scopus, and its altmetric score over each of three successive years.
Findings –The topics of thehighest scored altmetric papers (n= 40) sample focused on stroke,obesity, and
diabetes for all three years. Analysisof high initial altmetric scores over the course of the three years shifted
from a possible predictor of future impact in the second year to no indicator of long-term interest in the
scientificcommunity as the public interest waned overtime.
Research limitations/implications –Theauthors used Scopus Times Cited and Altmetrics.com to gather data.
Originality/value –Initially assesseda total of 3,678 unique publications and worked with the 40highest
altmetric scores in subsequent years. Data showedthat subjects of interest to the public receive the highest
altmetric scores and the topicareas did not change over the course of the study. These initially high altmetric
scores do not indicatelong-term interest by the scientific community.
Keywords Faculty, Altmetrics, Citations, Publications, Implications, Traditional metrics
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Librarians love to create their own nomenclature or put their own spin on existing words.
This tendency has exacerbated since the dawn of the “automationage”when such terms as
online catalog, retrospective conversion, Dublin Core, discovery, metadata, and assessment
entered the vocabulary. A more recent addition to this nomenclatureis altmetrics. It began
to be seen in the literature in the late 2000’s and by 2010 the term was used to distinguish
alternatives to citation counts and journal metrics (Priem et al,2011). More recently, it has
come to refer to article-level metrics (Khodiyar et al., 2014) such as mentions on blogs,
twitter, discussion boards, Facebook or article downloads to citation managers such as
Mendeley or CiteULike (Collisterand Deliyannides, 2016).
It is somewhat interesting to note that thegrowth of this alternative method of tracking
the use and impact of published content appeared at approximately the same time as the
explosion of open access journals and the impact of predatory publishing actions on the
academic community. Compounded with the general opinion that “high-impact factor
journals favor well-known or well-funded investigators and that publishing there is
Many thanks to Melissa Previtera for her work on the charts and heat maps for this article. Also, for
the assistance of our colleagues Kristen Burgess, Peggy Frondorf, Tiffany Grant, Charles Kishman,
and Don Jason in gathering data during this three year unplanned analyses.
DLP
33,4
314
Received 30 January 2017
Revised 16 March 2017
Accepted 16 March 2017
DigitalLibrary Perspectives
Vol.33 No. 4, 2017
pp. 314-323
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2059-5816
DOI 10.1108/DLP-01-2017-0005
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