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

Mendeley readership as a filtering tool to identify highly cited publications

This study presents a large scale analysis of the distribution and presence of Mendeley readership scores over time and across disciplines. We study whether Mendeley readership scores (RS) can identify highly cited publications more effectively than journal citation scores (JCS). Web of Science (WoS) publications with DOIs published during the period 2004-2013 and across 5 major scientific fields have been analyzed. The main result of this study shows that readership scores are more effective (in terms of precision/recall values) than journal citation scores to identify highly cited publications across all fields of science and publication years. The findings also show that 86.5% of all the publications are covered by Mendeley and have at least one reader. Also the share of publications with Mendeley readership scores is increasing from 84% in 2004 to 89% in 2009, and decreasing from 88% in 2010 to 82% in 2013. However, it is noted that publications from 2010 onwards exhibit on average a higher density of readership vs. citation scores. This indicates that compared to citation scores, readership scores are more prevalent for recent publications and hence they could work as an early indicator of research impact. These findings highlight the potential and value of Mendeley as a tool for scientometric purposes and particularly as a relevant tool to identify highly cited publications

arXiv popularity from a citation analysis point of view

This study aims to provide an overview of the citation rate of arXiv.org since its launch in August 1991, based on the Scopus citation database. The total number of citations to arXiv in Scopus in the 26 year period was 135,782 of which the highest number of citations was 23,288 in 2016. It is also shown that arXiv-deposited papers are highly cited by physics and astronomy, mathematics, computer science, and engineering. It can be seen that researchers from the United States, Germany, China, United Kingdom, France, and Italy cite arXiv-deposited papers more than others. The analysis of document types indicates that articles rank first with 69% of all Scopus documents citing arXiv from 1991-2016, followed by conference papers (24.7%), reviews (3.2%), and book chapters (1.5%). It can be concluded that arXiv is cited increasingly by different subject areas, by different languages (especially English, Chinese and French), and by various countries

Collaboration - changing the global landscape of science: proceedings of 10th International Conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics & 15th COLLNET Meeting 2014, September 3 - 5, 2014, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany

The 10th WIS encourages continued investigation into the field of applied scientometrics. The broad focus of the conference is on collaboration and communication in science and technology, science policy, quantitative aspects of science and combination and integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches in study of scientific practices. The conference thus aims to contribute to evidence-based and informed knowledge about scientific research and practices witch in turn may further provide input to institutional, regional, national and international research and innovation policy making