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Reliability and accuracy of altmetric providers: a comparison among Altmetric.com, PlumX and Crossref Event Data

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  • José Luis Ortega

    (Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC))

Abstract

The aim of this study is to measure differences between three relevant altmetric providers: Altmetric.com, PlumX and Crossref Event Data (CED). More than 67,000 research papers, initially extracted from PlumX, were searched in Altmetric.com and CED to compare their counts. Differences between services were analyzed regarding the number of documents with an altmetric event and the counting differences in each metric. Results show that Altmetric.com is the provider with the best coverage of blog posts, news and tweets; while PlumX better collects Mendeley readers; and CED is the site that extracts more Wikipedia citations. The study concludes that there are important counting differences due to technical errors and extracting criteria. The article recommends the use of specific services for the analysis of particular metrics. While, it should be mandatory to employ the combination of several providers, if we want to perform an overall analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • José Luis Ortega, 2018. "Reliability and accuracy of altmetric providers: a comparison among Altmetric.com, PlumX and Crossref Event Data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2123-2138, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:116:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2838-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2838-z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    7. 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.
    8. Yang, Siluo & Zheng, Mengxue & Yu, Yonghao & Wolfram, Dietmar, 2021. "Are Altmetric.com scores effective for research impact evaluation in the social sciences and humanities?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    9. Daniel Torres-Salinas & Domingo Docampo & Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado & Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, 2024. "The many publics of science: using altmetrics to identify common communication channels by scientific field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 3705-3723, July.
    10. José Luis Ortega, 2020. "Blogs and news sources coverage in altmetrics data providers: a comparative analysis by country, language, and subject," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 555-572, January.
    11. Manika Lamba, 2020. "Research productivity of health care policy faculty: a cohort study of Harvard Medical School," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 107-130, July.
    12. David Andrés Camargo Mayorga, 2021. "Acerca de las altmetrics," Revista Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, vol. 29(1), pages 7-9, March.
    13. Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha & Mahshid Abdoli & Emma Stuart & Meiko Makita & Paul Wilson & Jonathan Levitt, 2023. "Do altmetric scores reflect article quality? Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(5), pages 582-593, May.
    14. Enrique Orduña-Malea & Adolfo Alonso-Arroyo & José-Antonio Ontalba-Ruipérez & Ferrán Catalá-López, 2023. "Evaluating the online impact of reporting guidelines for randomised trial reports and protocols: a cross-sectional web-based data analysis of CONSORT and SPIRIT initiatives," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 407-440, January.
    15. Ortega, José Luis, 2020. "Proposal of composed altmetric indicators based on prevalence and impact dimensions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    16. Zhichao Fang & Jonathan Dudek & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "The stability of Twitter metrics: A study on unavailable Twitter mentions of scientific publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(12), pages 1455-1469, December.
    17. Houqiang Yu & Xueting Cao & Tingting Xiao & Zhenyi Yang, 2020. "How accurate are policy document mentions? A first look at the role of altmetrics database," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1517-1540, November.
    18. 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.

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