Altmetrics: Six Years of Changing Scholarly Appraisal

Authors

  • Librarian, Raghunathpur College, P.O. Raghunathpur, Purulia − 723 133, West Bengal
  • Asst. Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore − 721 102, West Bengal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17821/srels/2017/v54i2/111346

Keywords:

Altmetrics, Altmetric Score, Article-Level Metrics, AS/TC Ratio, Citation Count, Content Analysis, Informetrics, Open Source Metrics, Scholarly Appraisal, Scientometrics, Wikimetrics

Abstract

The last decade of the 20th century was marked as the opening gateway to internet and communication revolution, which added new dimensions to information and knowledge society.  The scholarly community of today’s knowledge society communicates between each other in a non-traditional way besides the traditional way. The arrival of web 2.0 and scientists’ gradual use of said platforms as tools for the diffusion and receipt of scientific information and with part of the scientific community relatively receptive, that scientometrics 2.0 began to be discussed.  Another milestone in the era of scientometrics 2.0 is the ‘Wikimetrics’. After the ‘Wikimetrics’ next footprint comes with the advent of ‘Article-level metrics’. Article-level metrics followed by Altmetrics, i.e. Alternative Metrics. The term altmetrics was coined by Jason Priem in 2010, as a generalization of article level metrics, and rooted in the twitter #altmetrics hashtag. Although altmetrics usually functions as metrics about articles, but it can also be applied to people, journals, books, data sets, presentations, videos, source code repositories, web pages, etc. Altmetrics does not cover just citation counts, but also other aspects of the impact of a work, such as how many data and knowledge bases refer to it, article views, download, or mentions in social media and news media. In this paper, the altmetric scores of top-cited altmetric papers are presented. Also, the contents of the same are analysed and presented. It is interesting to note that all top-cited papers appeared from diverse subject domains, i.e. big data in science, biological science, medical science, research methodology, social studies, citation studies and scientometrics, different issues involved in social networking et al. The subject domain altmetrics is a highly interdisciplinary field covering all major areas of universe of knowledge. This study reflects other notable feature, i.e. the discord between traditional metric (times cited) and modern metric (altmetric score). 

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Author Biographies

Dyuti Samanta, Librarian, Raghunathpur College, P.O. Raghunathpur, Purulia − 723 133, West Bengal

Asst. Professor; Dept. of Library and Information Science

Bidyarthi Dutta, Asst. Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore − 721 102, West Bengal

Librarian

Raghunathpur College

P.O. Raghunathpur

Purulia 723 133, West Bengal, India

 

&

 

Research Scholar

Dept. of Library and Information Science

Vidyasagar University, Midnapore

W.B. India

e-mail: dsamantalis@gmail.com

Mobile: 91-8768780077

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Published

2017-05-16

How to Cite

Samanta, D., & Dutta, B. (2017). Altmetrics: Six Years of Changing Scholarly Appraisal. Journal of Information and Knowledge, 54(2), 64–77. https://doi.org/10.17821/srels/2017/v54i2/111346

Issue

Section

Articles
Received 2017-03-03
Accepted 2017-05-03
Published 2017-05-16

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