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A large-scale comparison of coverage and mentions captured by the two altmetric aggregators: Altmetric.com and PlumX

Author

Listed:
  • Mousumi Karmakar

    (Banaras Hindu University)

  • Sumit Kumar Banshal

    (Daffodil International University)

  • Vivek Kumar Singh

    (Banaras Hindu University)

Abstract

The increased social media attention to scholarly articles has resulted in creation of platforms & services to track the social media transactions around them. Altmetric.com and PlumX are two such popular altmetric aggregators. Scholarly articles get mentions in different social platforms (such as Twitter, Blog, Facebook) and academic social networks (such as Mendeley, Academia and ResearchGate). The aggregators track activity and events in social media and academic social networks and provide the coverage and transaction data to researchers for various purposes. Some previous studies have compared different altmetric aggregators and found differences in the coverage and mentions captured by them. This paper attempts to revisit the question by doing a large-scale analysis of altmetric mentions captured by the two aggregators, for a set 1,785,149 publication records from Web of Science. Results obtained show that PlumX tracks more altmetric sources and captures altmetric events for a larger number of articles as compared to Altmetric.com. However, the coverage and average mentions of the two aggregators, for the same set of articles, vary across different platforms, with Altmetric.com recording higher mentions in Twitter and Blog, and PlumX recording higher mentions in Facebook and Mendeley. The article also analysed coverage and average mentions captured by the two aggregators across different document types, subjects and publishers.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:126:y:2021:i:5:d:10.1007_s11192-021-03941-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-021-03941-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
    2. Christine Meschede & Tobias Siebenlist, 2018. "Cross-metric compatability and inconsistencies of altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 283-297, April.
    3. Stefanie Haustein & Isabella Peters & Judit Bar-Ilan & Jason Priem & Hadas Shema & Jens Terliesner, 2014. "Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1145-1163, November.
    4. Mike Thelwall, 2018. "Early Mendeley readers correlate with later citation counts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(3), pages 1231-1240, June.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Thelwall, Mike & Nevill, Tamara, 2018. "Could scientists use Altmetric.com scores to predict longer term citation counts?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 237-248.
    8. Rodrigo Costas & Zohreh Zahedi & Paul Wouters, 2015. "Do “altmetrics” correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of altmetric indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary perspective," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(10), pages 2003-2019, October.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Alice Fleerackers & Lise Nehring & Lauren A. Maggio & Asura Enkhbayar & Laura Moorhead & Juan Pablo Alperin, 2022. "Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6109-6123, November.
    3. Yashan Li & Jinge Mao & Lin Zhang & Dongbo Wang & Si Shen & Ying Huang, 2022. "How scientific research incorporates policy: an examination using the case of China’s science and technology evaluation system," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5283-5306, September.
    4. 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.

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