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The life cycle of altmetric impact: A longitudinal study of six metrics from PlumX

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  • Ortega, José Luis

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to describe the life cycle of altmetric and bibliometric indicators in a sample of publications. Altmetrics (Downloads, Views, Readers, Tweets, and Blog mentions) and bibliometric counts (Citations) (in this study, the indicators will be capitalized to differentiate them from the general language) of 5185 publications (19,186 observations) were extracted from PlumX to observe their distribution according to the publication age. Correlations between these metrics were calculated from month to month to observe the evolution of these relationships. The results showed that mention metrics (Tweets and Blog mentions) are the earliest metrics that become available most quickly and have the shortest life cycle. Next, Readers are the metrics with the highest prevalence and with the second fastest growth. Views and Downloads show a continuous growth, being the indicators with the longest life cycles. Finally, Citations are the slowest indicators and have a low prevalence. Correlations show a strong relationship between mention metrics and Readers and Downloads, and between Readers and Citations. These results enable us to create a schematic diagram of the relationships between these metrics from a longitudinal view.

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  • Ortega, José Luis, 2018. "The life cycle of altmetric impact: A longitudinal study of six metrics from PlumX," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 579-589.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:12:y:2018:i:3:p:579-589
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2018.06.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

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    2. Qianjin Zong & Yafen Xie & Rongchan Tuo & Jingshi Huang & Yang Yang, 2019. "The impact of video abstract on citation counts: evidence from a retrospective cohort study of New Journal of Physics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1715-1727, June.
    3. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "Studying the accumulation velocity of altmetric data tracked by Altmetric.com," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 1077-1101, May.
    4. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Other than detecting impact in advance, alternative metrics could act as early warning signs of retractions: tentative findings of a study into the papers retracted by PLoS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2449-2469, December.
    5. Daniela De Filippo & Fernanda Morillo & Borja González-Albo, 2023. "Measuring the Impact and Influence of Scientific Activity in the Humanities and Social Sciences," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-17, June.
    6. Michael Taylor, 2023. "Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow: five altmetric sources observed over a decade show evolving trends, by research age, attention source maturity and open access status," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2175-2200, April.
    7. Zhou, Qingqing & Zhang, Chengzhi, 2021. "Breaking community boundary: Comparing academic and social communication preferences regarding global pandemics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    8. Nguyen, Ai Linh & Liu, Wenyuan & Khor, Khiam Aik & Nanetti, Andrea & Cheong, Siew Ann, 2020. "The golden eras of graphene science and technology: Bibliographic evidences from journal and patent publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    9. Jane Cho, 2021. "Altmetrics analysis of highly cited academic papers in the field of library and information science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7623-7635, September.
    10. Brito, Ana C.M. & Silva, Filipi N. & de Arruda, Henrique F. & Comin, Cesar H. & Amancio, Diego R. & Costa, Luciano da F., 2021. "Classification of abrupt changes along viewing profiles of scientific articles," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    11. Mousumi Karmakar & Sumit Kumar Banshal & Vivek Kumar Singh, 2021. "A large-scale comparison of coverage and mentions captured by the two altmetric aggregators: Altmetric.com and PlumX," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4465-4489, May.

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