Rachel Miles, lead author of the guide, discusses some key points from the new Using Altmetric Data Responsibly guide, which is now added to the collection of Responsible Use Guides from the LIS-Bibliometrics Community. This guide focuses specifically on data and attention sources from the altmetrics data provider, Altmetric.
Altmetric, owned by Digital Science, is a data provider of altmetrics data that tracks attention via direct links to research outputs from a variety of online sources: mainstream news media, social media, public policy documents, post-publication peer-review platforms, patents, online reference managers, blogs, Wikipedia, multimedia, and other online platforms. Altmetric provides some free resources for tracking its data, such as the Altmetric Bookmarklet, as well as its subscription database, Altmetric Explorer (AE). Altmetric (the company and data provider) should not be confused with altmetrics (lower-case ‘a’ with an ‘s’ at the end of the word), which is a term and field of research that represents a broad group of metrics that complement more traditional citation metrics. Altmetrics represents the online attention to research outside citation metrics, or bibliometrics. Altmetric is a popular data provider for altmetrics, but no data provider can track everything. For example, Altmetric does not track usage data to academic outputs, such as journal articles, books, and book chapters, but usage data are still considered an alternative metric, or an altmetric.
Currently, Altmetric is the only altmetrics data provider that provides data on a variety of attention sources on a single database; it is worth noting that Elsevier incorporates its PlumX altmetrics into many of its products, such as the Scopus database. However, Altmetric is a unique data provider in that it provides data solely on altmetrics via a database. It is also likely the most popular altmetrics data provider, in which many consumers of academic literature have likely seen the Altmetric donut on publication and repository pages, such as this one on a Taylor & Francis article’s metrics tab:
Many institutions and publishers use the AE database to understand the reach, influence, and engagement with their research beyond traditional scholarly publishing.
- Editors may use it to assess the online reach of their journal(s) on social media platforms and news media, which can help inform their communication efforts.
- Researchers may use altmetrics to demonstrate the engagement of their scholarly work with the public and in less formal communication channels.
- University administrators may use the data to assess the public interest in certain fields, or even departments with the institutional view of AE, across their university.
- Funders may allow or encourage the inclusion of altmetrics in grant proposals to demonstrate public engagement via social media and news media mentions, industry influence via patent citations, or public policy influence via policy document citations.
As a result of the growing interest in altmetrics, and in particular the interest in Altmetric as the leading provider of altmetrics data, the practitioner community of LIS-Bibliometrics set a goal to create a new responsible use guide on Altmetric data: Using Altmetric Data Responsibly: A Guide to Interpretation and Best Practice.
This guide includes sections on the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), how altmetrics applies to responsible research assessment, the types of outputs tracked by altmetrics, and the individual Altmetric sources of attention: news and mainstream media, social media (X, Facebook, Reddit, and historical data from Sina Weibo, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+); patents, peer review, syllabi (historical data only), multimedia, public policy documents, Wikipedia, research highlights, reference managers, and blogs. Each Altmetric attention source in the guide includes sections on the source’s definition, data source and coverage or demographics, the literature in the field, the limitations and biases, and the practical applications.
Altmetrics, as a field, is still in its infancy, with the concept evolving to a field of research around 2010, when the term altmetrics was coined, and when mentions to outputs beyond academic-to-academic citations could be more easily tracked. Tracking such online mentions has improved, but there are still limitations, especially since there are no standards on how to cite and link to research outputs in public policy documents, social media, news media, and other online platforms. Therefore, sometimes the results from the literature are mixed. For example, there are mixed results from studies on the correlation between X posts / tweets to research outputs and future citations. However, some research suggests that despite these inconsistencies in the literature, it seems to depend on the field of research1 and the researcher’s level of active participation on the platform, X (formerly Twitter)2,3. In other words, there is nuance in the data and the implications for researchers, administrators, and funders. Although altmetrics are not definitive indicators of ‘societal impact,’ which tends to indicate long-lasting impacts on the public, encouraging or requiring engagement with the public through online channels can improve research communication skills, knowledge mobilization, and public understanding of scholarly information4.
Finally, this guide was reviewed by three experts in the field: Timothy Bowman (Dominican University), Kim Holmberg (University of Turku), and Nicolas Robinson-Garcia (Universidad de Granada). Furthermore, the guide was reviewed by Carola Blackwood and the Product Team at Digital Science. For comments or feedback on the guide, please contact Rachel Miles (ramiles@vt.edu), the lead author.
Note: the guide is a PDF with bookmarks to make it easier to navigate. Select the document outline or bookmark icon on the left and peruse the sections of the guide. Each section can be used independently, such as the individual sections on Altmetric attention sources. It can also be used as a reference document.
References
- Haustein, S. (2019). Scholarly Twitter Metrics. In W. Glänzel, H. F. Moed, U. Schmoch, & M. Thelwall (Eds.), Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators (pp. 729–760). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3_28
- Mohammadi, E., Thelwall, M., Kwasny, M., & Holmes, K. L. (2018). Academic information on Twitter: A user survey. PLOS ONE, 13(5), e0197265. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197265
- Ortega, J. L. (2016). To be or not to be on Twitter, and its relationship with the tweeting and citation of research papers. Scientometrics, 109(2), 1353–1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2113-0
- Holmberg, K., Bowman, S., Bowman, T., Didegah, F., & Kortelainen, T. (2019). What Is Societal Impact and Where Do Altmetrics Fit into the Equation? Journal of Altmetrics, 2(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.29024/joa.21
Rachel Miles is the Research Impact Coordinator and Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech. She assists administrators and researchers with research metrics, researcher profile systems, publishing, assessment, analytics, and communication. She grounds her work in fair, ethical, and responsible research assessment and has made efforts for it in university governance. She received her MLS from Emporia State University in 2015. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8834-4304
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