Do altmetric scores reflect article quality? Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021 – Thelwall – Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology – Wiley Online Library

Abstract:  Altmetrics are web-based quantitative impact or attention indicators for academic articles that have been proposed to supplement citation counts. This article reports the first assessment of the extent to which mature altmetrics from Altmetric.com and Mendeley associate with individual article quality scores. It exploits expert norm-referenced peer review scores from the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021 for 67,030+ journal articles in all fields 2014–2017/2018, split into 34 broadly field-based Units of Assessment (UoAs). Altmetrics correlated more strongly with research quality than previously found, although less strongly than raw and field normalized Scopus citation counts. Surprisingly, field normalizing citation counts can reduce their strength as a quality indicator for articles in a single field. For most UoAs, Mendeley reader counts are the best altmetric (e.g., three Spearman correlations with quality scores above 0.5), tweet counts are also a moderate strength indicator in eight UoAs (Spearman correlations with quality scores above 0.3), ahead of news (eight correlations above 0.3, but generally weaker), blogs (five correlations above 0.3), and Facebook (three correlations above 0.3) citations, at least in the United Kingdom. In general, altmetrics are the strongest indicators of research quality in the health and physical sciences and weakest in the arts and humanities.

Sharing, showcasing and understanding the impact of non-traditional research outputs – Digital Science

“Research outputs are no longer just academic papers and datasets. 

Arts performances, conceptual designs, music scores, costumes, models and all other non-traditional research outputs can and should be shared, showcased and tracked.

Join us for this webinar on non-traditional research outputs with Figshare and Altmetric where we will discuss: 

Sharing and showcasing non-traditional research outputs in Figshare
How DOIs and robust metadata can ensure these outputs are discoverable and citable
How Altmetric attention data provides a unique insight into the online conversations surrounding these outputs

Sharing real examples from institutions around the world and with product specialists from both Figshare and Altmetric, this webinar will provide an overview of how you can share NTROs and why it’s important….”

Tips for Improving the Visibility of Research Publications | ACS Measurement Science Au

“A word of advice: if your article is open access (as it will be in ACS Measurement Science Au), then it might be tempting to post the full article on all these different platforms. But when it comes to collating statistics for your CV (usage, citations, etc.), it is easier if you have fewer places to check where people can access the full article. The publisher site will count usage from their site?so providing links that send people there will likely make your job easier in the long run. Similarly, Altmetric, the service that measures and monitors the reach and impact of scholarship and research through online interactions, counts only mentions of the published article, not versions posted elsewhere. Another useful byproduct of sharing links to the published article (rather than sharing PDFs) is that these are counted positively in search engine algorithms: the more traffic your links create, the more likely it is that your paper will appear in search results….”

Scholastica announces integration with Altmetric Badges for its OA Publishing Platform

“Scholastica, a leading software solutions provider for academic journals, announced today that its open access publishing platform now includes an Altmetric Badge integration option to help journals, their authors, and readers track alternative impact indicators for articles.

Journals subscribed to Scholastica’s open access publishing platform with a paid Altmetric account can enable the new integration to have Altmetric Badges automatically displayed on the public metrics page for all the articles they publish via Scholastica. Each Altmetric Badge links to an Altmetric details page that features a breakdown of online attention received by the article….”

Produce, publish, promote, track and analyze: Altmetric and Figshare for NTROs – Digital Science

“Join us on June 15 at 2pm AEST for a webinar with Altmetric and Figshare. 

We’ll be discussing how you can effectively promote your Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs) using a Figshare repository and how to generate Altmetric attention around those research outputs, ensuring you get the credit you deserve. …”

European Institutions Adopt Altmetric Explorer for Institutions – Digital Science

“Our portfolio company Altmetric announce that École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has become the latest institution to adopt the Explorer for Institutions platform to help analyse the online engagement surrounding its scholarly research outputs.

With an intuitive interface which enables users to browse, filter and report on the latest shares and mentions for over 10 million research outputs, the Explorer for Institutions platform makes it easy to identify where academic work has received mainstream or social media coverage, been referenced in public policy, or received attention from scholarly and broader audiences in places such as Wikipedia, Reddit and post-publication peer-review forums. Citation data from Scopus and Web of Science is also included where available.

EPFL joins leading institutions including Ghent University, ETH Zurich, The University of Helsinki and the International Institute of Social Studies and the Erasmus Research Institute of Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam in utilising Altmetric data to better understand the reach and influence of published research.”