Alternative metrics in scientometrics: A meta-analysis of research into three altmetrics

TL;DR

This paper reviews research on three key altmetrics—Twitter, online reference managers, and blogging—focusing on their correlation with traditional citation counts through meta-analyses.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive meta-analysis of the correlation between altmetrics and citations, highlighting the varying degrees of association for different altmetric sources.

Findings

Microblogging counts have negligible correlation with citations.

Blog counts show small correlation with citations.

Bookmark counts from reference managers have medium to large correlation with citations.

Abstract

Alternative metrics are currently one of the most popular research topics in scientometric research. This paper provides an overview of research into three of the most important altmetrics: microblogging (Twitter), online reference managers (Mendeley and CiteULike) and blogging. The literature is discussed in relation to the possible use of altmetrics in research evaluation. Since the research was particularly interested in the correlation between altmetrics counts and citation counts, this overview focuses particularly on this correlation. For each altmetric, a meta-analysis is calculated for its correlation with traditional citation counts. As the results of the meta-analyses show, the correlation with traditional citations for micro-blogging counts is negligible (pooled r=0.003), for blog counts it is small (pooled r=0.12) and for bookmark counts from online reference managers, medium to large (CiteULike pooled r=0.23; Mendeley pooled r=0.51).