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Exploring the relationships between altmetric counts and citations of papers in different academic fields based on co-occurrence analysis

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  • Chieh Liu

    (Atomic Energy Council
    National Taiwan University)

  • Mu-Hsuan Huang

    (National Taiwan University)

Abstract

Altmetrics is an emerging method for observing academic communication. Many researchers have explored the relationships between altmetric counts and citations through correlation analysis, but there is no consistent result. The varied results may come from the divergence of data sources, disciplinary differences, and the characteristics of data distribution. To reduce the influence of the interfering factors above, the Co-occurrence analysis was proposed in this study as the method to explore the relationships between citations and altmetric counts. We observe the overlap between the highly-cited papers and the high altmetric count papers, alongside with the coverage of each collection from various altmetric sources in different academic fields. The results show that Mendeley has the highest correlation with citations among all the altmetric sources in the five academic fields, and might be the only one having the opportunity to be an indicator for academic evaluation. The other altmetric counts from different sources do not show strong relationships with citations in general.

Suggested Citation

  • Chieh Liu & Mu-Hsuan Huang, 2022. "Exploring the relationships between altmetric counts and citations of papers in different academic fields based on co-occurrence analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4939-4958, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:8:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04456-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04456-w
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