Do altmetrics correlate with the quality of papers? A large-scale empirical study based on F1000Prime data

In this study, we address the question whether (and to what extent, respectively) altmetrics are related to the scientific quality of papers (as measured by peer assessments). Only a few studies have previously investigated the relationship between altmetrics and assessments by peers. In the first step, we analyse the underlying dimensions of measurement for traditional metrics (citation counts) and altmetrics - by using principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis (FA). In the second step, we test the relationship between the dimensions and quality of papers (as measured by the post-publication peer-review system of F1000Prime assessments) - using regression analysis. The results of the PCA and FA show that altmetrics operate along different dimensions, whereas Mendeley counts are related to citation counts, and tweets form a separate dimension. The results of the regression analysis indicate that citation-based metrics and readership counts are significantly more related to quality, than tweets. This result on the one hand questions the use of Twitter counts for research evaluation purposes and on the other hand indicates potential use of Mendeley reader counts

Climate Change Research in View of Bibliometrics

This bibliometric study of a large publication set dealing with research on climate change aims at mapping the relevant literature from a bibliometric perspective and presents a multitude of quantitative data: (1) The growth of the overall publication output as well as (2) of some major subfields, (3) the contributing journals and countries as well as their citation impact, and (4) a title word analysis aiming to illustrate the time evolution and relative importance of specific research topics. The study is based on 222,060 papers published between 1980 and 2014. The total number of papers shows a strong increase with a doubling every 5-6 years. Continental biomass related research is the major subfield, closely followed by climate modeling. Research dealing with adaptation, mitigation, risks, and vulnerability of global warming is comparatively small, but their share of papers increased exponentially since 2005. Research on vulnerability and on adaptation published the largest proportion of very important papers. Research on climate change is quantitatively dominated by the USA, followed by the UK, Germany, and Canada. The citation-based indicators exhibit consistently that the UK has produced the largest proportion of high impact papers compared to the other countries (having published more than 10,000 papers). The title word analysis shows that the term climate change comes forward with time. Furthermore, the term impact arises and points to research dealing with the various effects of climate change. Finally, the term model and related terms prominently appear independent of time, indicating the high relevance of climate modeling.Comment: 40 pages, 6 figures, and 4 table

Networks of reader and country status: An analysis of Mendeley reader statistics

The number of papers published in journals indexed by the Web of Science core collection is steadily increasing. In recent years, nearly two million new papers were published each year; somewhat more than one million papers when primary research papers are considered only (articles and reviews are the document types where primary research is usually reported or reviewed). However, who reads these papers? More precisely, which groups of researchers from which (self-assigned) scientific disciplines and countries are reading these papers? Is it possible to visualize readership patterns for certain countries, scientific disciplines, or academic status groups? One popular method to answer these questions is a network analysis. In this study, we analyze Mendeley readership data of a set of 1,133,224 articles and 64,960 reviews with publication year 2012 to generate three different kinds of networks: (1) The network based on disciplinary affiliations of Mendeley readers contains four groups: (i) biology, (ii) social science and humanities (including relevant computer science), (iii) bio-medical sciences, and (iv) natural science and engineering. In all four groups, the category with the addition "miscellaneous" prevails. (2) The network of co-readers in terms of professional status shows that a common interest in papers is mainly shared among PhD students, Master's students, and postdocs. (3) The country network focusses on global readership patterns: a group of 53 nations is identified as core to the scientific enterprise, including Russia and China as well as two thirds of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures (also web-based startable), and 2 table