IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jinfst/v70y2019i3p271-282.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Altmetric scores: An early indicator of research impact

Author

Listed:
  • Jenny Wooldridge
  • Mike B. King

Abstract

In this article we test whether metrics of online attention describing research can provide information on research quality and societal impact that is not found in citation data alone. Our approach is to set up a traditional model in which the true quality or impact of a university department is determined by a panel of experts, but a citation metric is regarded as a reasonable proxy. However, the model assumes that the information contained in the scores provided by an expert panel exceeds that contained in a citation metric (HEFCE, 2015). Finally, we extend this model by including altmetric data to see if it adds information about a department's performance that cannot be gleaned from citations alone. We find the presence of altmetric data for the cited underpinning research to be highly correlated with peer review scores for societal impact. Conversely, no such connection was seen with the assessment of research quality. Our findings therefore suggest altmetric data could be useful as an aid to assessing impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Wooldridge & Mike B. King, 2019. "Altmetric scores: An early indicator of research impact," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 70(3), pages 271-282, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:70:y:2019:i:3:p:271-282
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24122
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24122
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.24122?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yu, Houqiang & Li, Longfei & Cao, Xueting & Chen, Tao, 2022. "Exploring country's preference over news mentions to academic papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    2. Akella, Akhil Pandey & Alhoori, Hamed & Kondamudi, Pavan Ravikanth & Freeman, Cole & Zhou, Haiming, 2021. "Early indicators of scientific impact: Predicting citations with altmetrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    3. Zhang, Xinyuan & Xie, Qing & Song, Min, 2021. "Measuring the impact of novelty, bibliometric, and academic-network factors on citation count using a neural network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    4. Ana-Beatriz Hernández-Lara & Maria-Victoria Sánchez-Rebull & Angels Niñerola, 2021. "Six Sigma in Health Literature, What Matters?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-13, August.
    5. Houqiang Yu & Xinyun Yu & Xueting Cao, 2022. "How accurate are news mentions of scholarly output? A content analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4075-4096, July.
    6. Dotti, Nicola Francesco & Walczyk, Julia, 2022. "What is the societal impact of university research? A policy-oriented review to map approaches, identify monitoring methods and success factors," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:70:y:2019:i:3:p:271-282. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.