Introduction
Locating altmetrics data
Cited works

Introduction

With social media and an increased focus on the societal impact of research, interest has turned to possibilities of measuring how scholarly publications are mentioned in fora other than the academic citations measured by bibliometric indicators. Such alternative metrics (altmetrics) can include not only mentions in social media, saves in online reference managers such as Mendeley, and post-publication peer-review platforms, but also mentions in mainstream media, policy documents, and syllabi (Sugimoto & Larivière, 2018). In practice, a limitation is that most tools for capturing altmetrics data base them on the mention of a publication’s DOI (Digital Object Identifier). A consequence is that Twitter data are generally overrepresented and that many of the mentions are by other academics, who are aware of the relevance of including a DOI (few newspaper articles that write about research findings include a DOI to the original paper, for instance). Studies have also indicated that social media mentions tend to promote or recommend the publication rather than engage in in-depth discussion or evaluation of it (Sugimoto & Larivière, 2018; Fragola, 2021).

Altmetrics measurements or scores are thus not, at least not so far, a very good way of measuring societal impact or, indeed, impact in general, at least not as a whole. Rather, altmetrics are often considered to indicate attention. It has the advantage that gaining an idea of a work's attention in non-academic fora is often much quicker than measuring citations in academic publications, because it takes time to get cited. Another advantage is that altmetrics generally focus on the individual article rather than on the journal or conference in which it was published (although where it was published may of course influence how much attention a paper gets).

Locating altmetrics data

Altmetrics data can be located at the article level (primarily) through the databases below.

ImpactStory

ImpactStory is a service that allows individual researchers to see what attention their publications have received (based on their ORCID profile). It requires you to log in through Twitter or ORCID.

Altmetric.com

Altmetric Attention Score Donut with legend to source types

One of the most widely spread tools for altmetrics analysis is provided by the database Altmetric, owned by the same company as the publisher SpringerNature and the database Dimensions. GU does not have a license for Altmetric, but a limited amount of their metrics are available through Dimensions. The database have become particularly well-known for their Altmetric Attention Score donut. The colours of the donut indicate what sources are most common among a particular publication’s attention, and the score in the middle of the donut indicates the attention score. The Altmetric attention score gives different weight depending on where attention comes from (source type and person/organization).
Image from https://www.altmetric.com/about-our-data/the-donut-and-score/)

Scopus

PlumX is another company, owned by Elsevier, that provides altmetrics data. For GU employees and students, PlumX data are available through the citation index Scopus.

Cited works

Fragola, R. (2021). Altmetrics, Twitter, and Engagement: A Content Analysis Study of Tweets to Humanities Articles. [Master's thesis, University of Borås]. DiVA. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-26776

Sugimoto, C. R. & Larivière, V. (2018). Measuring Research: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press.
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-26776 (Länkar till en externa sida.)

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