The insoluble problems of books: what does Altmetric.com have to offer?
| Published date | 19 November 2018 |
| Pages | 691-707 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-06-2018-0152 |
| Date | 19 November 2018 |
| Author | Daniel Torres-Salinas,Juan Gorraiz,Nicolas Robinson-Garcia |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
The insoluble problems of books:
what does Altmetric.com
have to offer?
Daniel Torres-Salinas
Universidad de Granada Ringgold, Granada, Spain
Juan Gorraiz
Universitat Wien Universitatsbibliothek Wien, Wien, Austria, and
Nicolas Robinson-Garcia
INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to analyze the capabilities, functionalities and appropriateness of
Altmetric.com as a data source for the bibliometric analysis of books in comparison to PlumX.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors perform an exploratory analysis on the metrics the
Altmetric Explorer for Institutions, platform offers for books. The authors use two distinct data sets of books.
On the one hand, the authors analyze the Book Collection included in Altmetric.com. On the other hand, the
authors use Clarivate’s Master Book List, to analyze Altmetric.com’s capabilities to download and merge data
with external databases. Finally, the authors compare the findings with those obtained in a previous study
performed in PlumX.
Findings –Altmetric.com combines and orderly tracks a set of data sources combined by DOI identifiers to
retrieve metadata from books, being Google Books its main provider. It also retrieves information from
commercial publishers and from some Open Access initiatives, including those led by university libraries,
such as Harvard Library. We find issues with linkages between records and mentions or ISBN discrepancies.
Furthermore, the authors find that automatic bots affect greatly Wikipedia mentions to books. The
comparison with PlumX suggests that none of these tools provide a complete picture of the social attention
generated by books and are rather complementary than comparable tools.
Practical implications –This study targets different audience which can benefit from the findings.
First, bibliometricians and researchers who seek for alternative sources to develop bibliometric analyses of
books, with a special focus on the Social Sciences and Humanities fields. Second, librarians and research
managers who are the main clients to which these tools are directed. Third, Altmetric.com itself as well as
other altmetric providers who might get a better understanding of the limitations users encounter and
improve this promising tool.
Originality/value –This is the first study to analyze Altmetric.com’s functionalities and capabilities
for providing metric data for books and to compare results from this platform, with those obtained
via PlumX.
Keywords Books, Altmetrics,Research evaluation, Databases, Library tools, Social sciencesand humanities
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Many types of indicators have been suggested for the evaluation of books (Zuccala and
Robinson-Garcia, 2018). Still, this publication type represents a weak spot when applying
bibliometric techniques to assess the scientific impact of research. Most of the attention given to
monographs is coming from bibliometricians specialized in the assessment of research in the
Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). This is partly dueto the many changes takingplace in
the publishing market, in addition to the emergence of new databases, analytical tools and
information providers. Moreover,there is an increasingdemand from policymakers to develop
metrics and indicators that can better assess the performance of SSH. In the last decade, all of
this has led to a renaissance of studies devoted to this particular issue. An example of such
interest is the launch of the “European network for research evaluation in the social sciences”
(http://enressh.eu). This initiative includes several working groups with one of them,
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 70 No. 6, 2018
pp. 691-707
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-06-2018-0152
Received 18 June 2018
Revised 21 September 2018
26 September 2018
Accepted 2 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
691
The insoluble
problems of
books
“Databases and uses of data for understanding SSH research,”which, among other goals,
aims at developing alternative metrics for the SSH.
Among the strands of SSH research devoted to the problem of books, there are two
closely related to the present study. The first includes all studies devoted to the analysis and
description of new databases and sources, and the second, though not mutually exclusive
from the first, includes the construction and development of new indicators. This study
explores and describes opportunities and limitations related to the use of Altmetric.com as a
novel data provider for book metrics. The term “Altmetrics”was originally used to refer to
metrics derived from social media activity and other alternative sources of information
which go beyond the scientific realm (Priem et al., 2010). But lately, the term seems to have
become a “basket”concept, with very different metrics and sources included in the same mix
(Wouters et al., 2018; Glänzel and Gorraiz, 2015). Their relevance is derived from the
increasing interest they have raised as a potential means of capturing broader forms of
impact (Bornmann, 2014). This is especially important in SSH research evaluation, where
some scholars have attributed the limitations of bibliometrics to the fact that these fields
target a broad array of audiences (Nederhof, 2006; Hammarfelt, 2014).
The enthusiasm surrounding altmetrics has created a window of opportunity for
publishing firms, who have oversold the benefits of these new metrics, with the assistance
of librarians, who “have become an important ally in the promotion of altmetrics, and a
gap has opened between what librarians recommend researchers use and what
researchers actually use”(Robinson-Garcia et al., 2017, p. 3). The present paper aims at
bridging the gap between bibliometricians and academics, and information professionals
and practitioners. We target especially university librarians and subject specialists who
are in direct contact with the academic community and are direct consumers of tools for
developing metrics. Our goal is to offer an overview and assessment of the new features
offered by Altmetric.com directed at providing altmetric indicators for books. Our
findings could be of interest for Altmetric.com or other altmetric aggregators, as many of
the issues explored could help indicate how more reliable and robust data might be
provided to various users and consumers.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. First, we will briefly review
previous studies analyzing data sources for bibliometric purposes with a special focus on
books, as well as different indicators proposed to assess their scholarly impact. The next
section will describe the information provided by Altmetric.com and the set of indicators
and platforms it covers. Here, we will focus on the Book Collection available through the
Altmetric Explorer for Institutions, including a general overview of the information
offered and sources from which the books are indexed. Section 4 presents a different
approach with regard to the use of altmetric data. Given a set of books, altmetric
indicators are retrieved and analyzed. Here, we explore data retrieval and processing
issues, coverage by fields and potential limitations. The following section discusses the
pertinence, usability and reliability of Altmetric.com when referring to the analysis of
monographs. While some of the issues discussed are common to other sources and tend to
be related to the nature of books and certain conceptual problems (Torres-Salinas et al.,
2014a, b), others are specific to Altmetric.com and should be taken into account if
considering its use for the analysis of the impact of books. Section 6 compares the results
provided and data retrieval issues with those found when using PlumX (Torres-Salinas,
Gumpenberger and Gorraiz, 2017). We then conclude with some final remarks.
2. Antecedents
An avalanche of studies exploring new data sources took place at the beginning of the
decade, with the launch of Web of Science’s Book Citation Index (Leydesdorff and Felt, 2012;
Gorraiz et al., 2013; Torres-Salinas et al., 2014a, b), the inclusion of books in Scopus
692
AJIM
70,6
To continue reading
Request your trial