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How accurate are news mentions of scholarly output? A content analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Houqiang Yu

    (Sun Yat-Sen University
    Nanjing University of Science and Technology)

  • Xinyun Yu

    (Nanjing University of Science and Technology)

  • Xueting Cao

    (Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation)

Abstract

News mentions are considered as useful source for measuring the societal impact of scholarly output, meanwhile data quality plays a fundamental role in its research and application. This study is aimed to measure the accuracy of news mentions data in the altmetrics database, in order to inform the reliability and limitation of relevant news altmetrics studies. In total, 5.83 million news mentions records that involve 1.03 million scholarly outputs were extracted from the whole dataset up to December 2019 provided by the Altmetric database. 3000 records were sampled for content analysis using stratified sampling strategy. Results show that: (1) 6 major types and 14 specific error types are identified. (2) Error occurs in 42.5% of the sample records, 27.1% could be attributable to the news platform and 15.4% could be attributable to the Altmetric database. (3) Inaccessibility to the source news article (25.9%), incorrect news link provided by the Altmetric database (6.9%) and inaccurate news mention (7.9%) are found to be the three most common error types. (4) 8.5% of the sample records have errors that would cause miscalculation and undermine the validity of studies based on the data, while 33.8% of the sample records have errors that would influence the reliability and reproductivity. (5) Underlying reasons for the errors are summarized and possible measures to improve the data quality are discussed in an in-depth and systematic way. These results suggest that although the Altmetric database has made great achievements in collecting news altmetrics data, the data collection can be further improved.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:7:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04382-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04382-x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Houqiang Yu & Biegzat Murat & Longfei Li & Tingting Xiao, 2021. "How accurate are Twitter and Facebook altmetrics data? A comparative content analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4437-4463, May.
    2. 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.
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    4. Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Sam Work & Vincent Larivière & Stefanie Haustein, 2017. "Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(9), pages 2037-2062, September.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Zahedi, Zohreh & Haustein, Stefanie, 2018. "On the relationships between bibliographic characteristics of scientific documents and citation and Mendeley readership counts: A large-scale analysis of Web of Science publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 191-202.
    8. Kuku Joseph Aduku & Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha, 2017. "Do Mendeley reader counts reflect the scholarly impact of conference papers? An investigation of computer science and engineering," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 573-581, July.
    9. Mojisola Erdt & Aarthy Nagarajan & Sei-Ching Joanna Sin & Yin-Leng Theng, 2016. "Altmetrics: an analysis of the state-of-the-art in measuring research impact on social media," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1117-1166, November.
    10. 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.
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