New Working Paper: A Meta-Analysis of Research Into Three Altmetrics (Twitter, Reference Managers, and Blogs)

Here’s a new working paper that will likely be of interest to many of you. It was posted to arXiv yesterday.

Title

Alternative metrics in scientometrics: A meta-analysis of research into three altmetrics

Author

Dr. Lutz Bornmann
Division for Science and Innovation Studies, Max Planck Society

Source

via arXiv
Posted July 30, 2014

Abstract

Alternative metrics are currently one of the most popular research topics in scientometric research.
This paper provides an overview of research into three of the most important altmetrics: microblogging (Twitter), online reference managers (Mendeley and CiteULike) and blogging.
The literature is discussed in relation to the possible use of altmetrics in research evaluation.
Since the research was particularly interested in the correlation between altmetrics counts and citation counts, this overview focuses particularly on this correlation.
For each altmetric, a meta-analysis is calculated for its correlation with traditional citation counts. As the results of the meta-analyses show, the correlation with traditional citations for micro-blogging counts is negligible (pooled r=0.003), for blog counts it is small (pooled r=0.12) and for bookmark counts from online reference managers, medium to large (CiteULike pooled r=0.23; Mendeley pooled r=0.51). Since the added value of an alternative metric, as an additional metric compared with traditional citation counts, is greater the less it correlates with traditional citation counts, the greatest added value – according to the meta-analysis – is associated with Twitter citations.

Direct to Full Text Paper (36 pages; PDF)
See Also: Dr. Bornmann’s Homepage (Includes Links to Additional Publications)

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