Abstract

The evolution of the top academic social networks: Mendeley, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate is analyzed. This study tests the current health of these platforms and determines which growth stage they are in by tracking the annual number of new members and documents. In addition, the degree of transparency of these sites is discussed in relation to publicly available information about their services. The results show these platforms are reaching a change in cycle, where the increase rates are slowing down, decreasing the aggregation rate of documents and users.

Abstract

This paper analyzes Altmetric.com, one of the most important altmetric data providers currently used. We have analyzed a set of publications with doi number indexed in the Web of Science during the period 2011-2013 and collected their data with the Altmetric API. 19% of the original set of papers was retrieved from Altmetric.com including some altmetric data. We identified 16 different social media sources from which Altmetric.com retrieves data. However five of them cover 95.5% of the total set. Twitter (87.1%) and Mendeley (64.8%) have the highest coverage. We conclude that Altmetric.com is a transparent, rich and accurate tool for altmetric data. Nevertheless, there are still potential limitations on its exhaustiveness as well as on the selection of social media sources that need further research.

Abstract

This paper analyzes Altmetric.com, one of the most important altmetric data providers currently used. We have analyzed a set of publications with doi number indexed in the Web of Science during the period 2011-2013 and collected their data with the Altmetric API. 19% of the original set of papers was retrieved from Altmetric.com including some altmetric data. We identified 16 different social media sources from which Altmetric.com retrieves data. However five of them cover 95.5% of the total set. Twitter (87.1%) and Mendeley (64.8%) have the highest coverage. We conclude that Altmetric.com is a transparent, rich and accurate tool for altmetric data. Nevertheless, there are still potential limitations on its exhaustiveness as well as on the selection of social media sources that need further research.

Abstract

We analyzed a discrete sample of the most frequent contributors to the journal El professional information (EPI) for the period 2009-2013. We studied the presence of these authors in social networks and the impact of their EPI publications indexed in Web of Science using different altmetrics. The results showed that 77% had a public profile on Google Scholar Profiles and 70% had an account on both LinkedIn and Mendeley. This platform has served as the tool with higher statistics and obtained the highest correlation with the number of citations in Web of Science (0.516). Other networks were Twitter (55%) and Slideshare (47%); despite its lower presence in the sample,  Slideshare offers users higher visibility, receiving the highest number of user hits. We also present detailed altmetrics for 47 EPI authors, ending with a reflection on the difficulty of analysing altmetrics at author level.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to review the current and most relevant literature on the use of altmetric providers since 2012. This review is supported by a meta-analysis of the coverage and metric counts obtained by more than 100 publications that have used these bibliographic platforms for altmetric studies. The article is the most comprehensive analysis of altmetric data providers (Lagotto, Altmetric.com, ImpactStory, Mendeley, PlumX, Crossref Event Data) and explores the coverage of publications, social media and events from a longitudinal view. Disciplinary differences were also analysed. The results show that most of the studies are based on Altmetric.com data. This provider is the service that captures most mentions from social media sites, blogs and news outlets. PlumX has better coverage, counting more Mendeley readers, but capturing fewer events. CED has a special coverage of mentions from Wikipedia, while Lagotto and ImpactStory are becoming disused products because of their limited reach.