Differences between journals and years in the proportions of students, researchers and faculty registering Mendeley articles

This article contains two investigations into Mendeley reader counts with the same dataset. Mendeley reader counts provide evidence of early scholarly impact for journal articles, but reflect the reading of a relatively young subset of all researchers. To investigate whether this age bias is constant or varies by narrow field and publication year, this article compares the proportions of student, researcher and faculty readers for articles published 1996-2016 in 36 large monodisciplinary journals. In these journals, undergraduates recorded the newest research and faculty the oldest, with large differences between journals. The existence of substantial differences in the composition of readers between related fields points to the need for caution when using Mendeley readers as substitutes for citations for broad fields. The second investigation shows, with the same data, that there are substantial differences between narrow fields in the time taken for Scopus citations to be as numerous as Mendeley readers. Thus, even narrow field differences can impact on the relative value of Mendeley compared to citation counts

Does female-authored research have more educational impact than male-authored research?

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Levy Library Press in Journal of Altmetrics on 04/10/2018, available online: http://doi.org/10.29024/joa.2 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Female academics are more likely to be in teaching-related roles in some countries, including the USA. As a side effect of this, female-authored journal articles may tend to be more useful for students. This study assesses this hypothesis by investigating whether female first-authored research has more uptake in education than male first-authored research. Based on an analysis of Mendeley readers of articles from 2014 in five countries and 100 narrow Scopus subject categories, the results show that female-authored articles attract more student readers than male-authored articles in Spain, Turkey, the UK and USA but not India. They also attract fewer professorial readers in Spain, the UK and the USA, but not India and Turkey, and tend to be less popular with senior academics. Because the results are based on analysis of differences within narrow fields they cannot be accounted for by females working in more education-related disciplines. The apparent additional educational impact for female-authored research could be due to selecting more accessible micro-specialisms, however, such as health-related instruments within the instrumentation narrow field. Whatever the cause, the results suggest that citation-based research evaluations may undervalue the wider impact of female researchers

Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review

Can alternative metrics (altmetrics) data be used to measure societal impact? We wrote this literature overview of empirical studies in order to find an answer to this question. The overview includes two parts. The first part, “societal impact measurements”, explains possible methods and problems in measuring the societal impact of research, case studies for societal impact measurement, societal impact considerations at funding organizations, and the societal problems that should be solved by science. The second part of the review, “altmetrics”, addresses a major question in research evaluation, which is whether altmetrics are proper indicators for measuring the societal impact of research. In the second part we explain the data sources used for altmetrics studies and the importance of field-normalized indicators for impact measurements. This review indicates that it should be relevant for impact measurements to be oriented towards pressing societal problems. Case studies in which societal impact of certain pieces of research is explained seem to provide a legitimate method for measuring societal impact. In the use of altmetrics, field-specific differences should be considered by applying field normalization (in cross-field comparisons). Altmetrics data such as social media counts might mainly reflect the public interest and discussion of scholarly works rather than their societal impact. Altmetrics (Twitter data) might be especially fruitfully employed for research evaluation purposes, if they are used in the context of network approaches. Conclusions based on altmetrics data in research evaluation should be drawn with caution

Identifying the Invisible Impact of Scholarly Publications: A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis Using Altmetrics

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.The field of ‘altmetrics’ is concerned with alternative metrics for the impact of research publications using social web data. Empirical studies are needed, however, to assess the validity of altmetrics from different perspectives. This thesis partly fills this gap by exploring the suitability and reliability of two altmetrics resources: Mendeley, a social reference manager website, and Faculty of F1000 (F1000), a post- publishing peer review platform. This thesis explores the correlations between the new metrics and citations at the level of articles for several disciplines and investigates the contexts in which the new metrics can be useful for research evaluation across different fields. Low and medium correlations were found between Mendeley readership counts and citations for Social Sciences, Humanities, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering articles from the Web of Science (WoS), suggesting that Mendeley data may reflect different aspects of research impact. A comparison between information flows based on Mendeley bookmarking data and cross-disciplinary citation analysis for social sciences and humanities disciplines revealed substantial similarities and some differences. This suggests that Mendeley readership data could be used to help identify knowledge transfer between scientific disciplines, especially for people that read but do not author articles, as well as providing evidence of impact at an earlier stage than is possible with citation counts. The majority of Mendeley readers for Clinical Medicine, Engineering and Technology, Social Science, Physics and Chemistry papers were PhD students and postdocs. The highest correlations between citations and Mendeley readership counts were for types of Mendeley users that often authored academic papers, suggesting that academics bookmark papers in Mendeley for reasons related to scientific publishing. In order to identify the extent to which Mendeley bookmarking counts reflect readership and to establish the motivations for bookmarking scientific papers in Mendeley, a large-scale survey found that 83% of Mendeley users read more than half of the papers in their personal libraries. The main reasons for bookmarking papers were citing in future publications, using in professional activities, citing in a thesis, and using in teaching and assignments. Thus, Mendeley bookmarking counts can potentially indicate the readership impact of research papers that have educational value for non-author users inside academia or the impact of research papers on practice for readers outside academia. This thesis also examines the relationship between article types (i.e., “New Finding”, “Confirmation”, “Clinical Trial”, “Technical Advance”, “Changes to Clinical Practice”, “Review”, “Refutation”, “Novel Drug Target”), citation counts and F1000 article factors (FFa). In seven out of nine cases, there were no significant differences between article types in terms of rankings based on citation counts and the F1000 Article Factor (FFa) scores. Nevertheless, citation counts and FFa scores were significantly different for articles tagged: “New finding” or “Changes to Clinical Practice”. This means that F1000 could be used in research evaluation exercises when the importance of practical findings needs to be recognised. Furthermore, since the majority of the studied articles were reviewed in their year of publication, F1000 could also be useful for quick evaluations

Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics : a review of the literature

Social media has become integrated into the fabric of the scholarly communication system in fundamental ways: principally through scholarly use of social media platforms and the promotion of new indicators on the basis of interactions with these platforms. Research and scholarship in this area has accelerated since the coining and subsequent advocacy for altmetrics—that is, research indicators based on social media activity. This review provides an extensive account of the state-of-the art in both scholarly use of social media and altmetrics. The review consists of two main parts: the first examines the use of social media in academia, examining the various functions these platforms have in the scholarly communication process and the factors that affect this use. The second part reviews empirical studies of altmetrics, discussing the various interpretations of altmetrics, data collection and methodological limitations, and differences according to platform. The review ends with a critical discussion of the implications of this transformation in the scholarly communication system

Do prestigious Spanish scholarly book publishers have more teaching impact?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the educational value of prestigious and productive Spanish scholarly publishers based on mentions of their books in online scholarly syllabi. Design/methodology/approach Syllabus mentions of 15,117 books from 27 publishers were searched for, manually checked and compared with Microsoft Academic (MA) citations. Findings Most books published by Ariel, Síntesis, Tecnos and Cátedra have been mentioned in at least one online syllabus, indicating that their books have consistently high educational value. In contrast, few books published by the most productive publishers were mentioned in online syllabi. Prestigious publishers have both the highest educational impact based on syllabus mentions and the highest research impact based on MA citations. Research limitations/implications The results might be different for other publishers. The online syllabus mentions found may be a small fraction of the syllabus mentions of the sampled books. Practical implications Authors of Spanish-language social sciences and humanities books should consider general prestige when selecting a publisher if they want educational uptake for their work. Originality/value This is the first study assessing book publishers based on syllabus mentions

Do prestigious Spanish scholarly book publishers have more teaching impact?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the educational value of prestigious and productive Spanish scholarly publishers based on mentions of their books in online scholarly syllabi. Design/methodology/approach Syllabus mentions of 15,117 books from 27 publishers were searched for, manually checked and compared with Microsoft Academic (MA) citations. Findings Most books published by Ariel, Síntesis, Tecnos and Cátedra have been mentioned in at least one online syllabus, indicating that their books have consistently high educational value. In contrast, few books published by the most productive publishers were mentioned in online syllabi. Prestigious publishers have both the highest educational impact based on syllabus mentions and the highest research impact based on MA citations. Research limitations/implications The results might be different for other publishers. The online syllabus mentions found may be a small fraction of the syllabus mentions of the sampled books. Practical implications Authors of Spanish-language social sciences and humanities books should consider general prestige when selecting a publisher if they want educational uptake for their work. Originality/value This is the first study assessing book publishers based on syllabus mentions

Seeking Impact and Visibility: Scholarly Communication in Southern Africa

The Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme (SCAP) was a three-year research and implementation initiative that took place between March 2010 and August 2013. Hosted by the University of Cape Town, the programme engaged the Universities of Botswana, Namibia and Mauritius in a process aimed at better understanding the dynamics around scholarly communication in the Southern African higher education environment and advancing the open access agenda for the purpose of increasing the visibility of African research. This work was made possible by a grant from the Canadian International Development Research Center (IDRC). This report synthesizes research and findings from the four institutional case studies conducted at the Universities of Botswana, Cape Town, Mauritius and Namibia. It provides an overview the scholarly communication activity systems at work in these four Southern African universities

E-visibility of environmental sciences researchers at the University of South Africa

Abstract : Research e-visibility in theory enables a researcher to establish and maintain a digital research portfolio utilising various research e-profiles on a number of research online communities and platforms. E-visibility embodies the online presence of the researcher and their research, researcher’s discoverability via research e-profiles and the accessibility of research output on online research communities. The rationale for this study has its foundation in the premise that enhancing the e-visibility of a researcher will increase the research and societal impact of the researcher. The development of an e-visibility strategy for the School of Environmental Sciences (SES) at the University of South Africa (Unisa) would be instrumental in enhancing the e-visibility of the researchers. This study aims at establishing guidelines for the development of an e-visibility strategy for SES researchers at Unisa as part of research support via the Library services. Altmetric and bibliometric data of the SES researchers, were collected during the 2-year period (December 2014 and December 2017) and e-visibility surveys were conducted at the beginning of the study (December 2014) and at the end of the study (April 2017) as part of a longitudinal e-visibility study. The data was analysed using statistical methods to ascertain: 1) the SES researchers e-visibility status, 2) the SES researchers’ perceptions about e-visibility, 3) the altmetric-bibliometric correlations (relationships) from the altmetrics sourced from the academic social networking tools and the bibliometrics derived from the citation resources, and 4) identifying e-visibility practices and actions increasing research and societal impact. The results reflected a total increase in online presence, discoverability, and accessibility therefore indicating an overall increase in the actual and perceived e-visibility of the SES researchers. The survey conducted at the end of the study, found that 73% of the SES researchers indicating that their e-visibility increased with online presence being enhanced, 69% were more discoverable and 76% of their research output was more accessible after applying what they learnt during the e-visibility awareness and training...Ph.D. (Information Management

Perceptions, motivations and behaviours towards 'research impact': a cross-disciplinary perspective

In recent years, the UK higher education sector has seen notable policy changes with regard to how research is funded, disseminated and evaluated. Important amongst these changes is the emphasis that policy makers have placed on disseminating peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles via Open Access (OA) publishing routes e.g. OA journals or OA repositories. Through the Open Science agenda there have also been a number of initiatives to promote the dissemination of other types of output that have not traditionally been made publicly available via the scholarly communication system, such as data, workflows and methodologies. The UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 introduced social/economic impact of research as an evaluation measure. This has been a significant policy shift away from academic impact being the sole measure of impact and has arguably raised the profile of public engagement activities (although it should be noted that public engagement is not equivalent to social/economic impact, but is an important pathway to realising such impact). This exploratory study sought to investigate the extent to which these recent policy changes are aligned with researchers publication, dissemination and public engagement practices across different disciplines. Furthermore, it sought to identify the perceptions and attitudes of researchers towards the concept of social/economic impact. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach consisting of a questionnaire- based survey and semi-structured interviews with researchers from a broad range of disciplines across the physical, health, engineering, social sciences, and arts and humanities across fifteen UK universities. The work of Becher (1987) and Becher & Trowler (2001) on disciplinary classification was used as an explanatory framework to understand disciplinary differences. The study found evidence of a lack of awareness of the principle of OA by some researchers across all disciplines; and that researchers, in the main, are not sharing their research data, therefore only the few who are doing so are realising the benefits that have been championed in research funders policies. Moreover, the study uncovered that due to the increased emphasis of impact in research evaluation, conflicting goals between researchers and academic leaders exist. The study found that researchers, particularly from Applied and Interdisciplinary (as opposed to Pure) disciplinary groups felt that research outputs such as articles published in practitioner journals were most appropriate in targeting and making research more accessible to practitioners, than prestigious peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. The thesis argues that there is still more to learn about what impact means to researchers and how it might be measured. The thesis makes an overall contribution to knowledge on a general level by providing greater understanding of how researchers have responded to the impact agenda. On a more specific level, the thesis identifies the effect of the impact agenda on academic autonomy, and situates this in different disciplinary contexts. It identifies that it is not only researchers from Pure disciplines who feel disadvantaged by the impact agenda , but also those from Interdisciplinary and Applied groups who feel an encroachment on their academic autonomy, particularly in selecting channels to disseminate their research and in selecting the relevant audiences they wish to engage with. Implications of the study's findings on researchers, higher education institutions and research funders are highlighted and recommendations to researchers, academic leaders and research funders are given