Exploring the Meaning and Perception of Altmetrics.

Exploring the Meaning and Perception of Altmetrics

The *metrics project aims to develop a deeper understanding of metrics used for research evaluation – with a focus on altmetrics – in order to assess their general significance and their perception amongst stakeholders. It investigates the popularity of a multitude of social media services among researchers, their demographics and concrete usage by means of exploratory studies. The results will be published in a social media registry. Thus, the project promotes greater openness and transparency of the different metrics’ meanings, a profound understanding of their perception and impact as well as recommendations for their standardization. Due to the project partners’ disciplinary orientations, the projects’ first main target groups consist of economists and social scientists.

As a first step, an exploratory online survey inquiring researchers’ usage of social media in their professional lives was conducted, collecting responses from over 3,400 participants. In total, researchers from 84 countries participated, the majority of them from Germany (51%), followed by the USA (10%) and Italy (5%).

With its goal of determining the services used professionally by researchers, this survey follows a similar path as the one of Kramer & Bosman (2016), but it clearly differs regarding its focus: while Kramer & Bosman (2016) asked for participants’ use of services within the six phases of the research process, this survey asked for detailed information on the intensity and the extent to which the services and the individual types of interactions provided by them are used. 

First findings confirm that for researchers from both targeted disciplines the professional usage of social media is far from being a marginal phenomenon, although the degrees to which the two disciplines make use of individual services differ considerably. Results of the survey will be presented and an initial version of the social media registry made available for feedback.  

Sources:

Kramer B and Bosman J. Innovations in scholarly communication - global survey on research tool usage [version 1; referees: 2 approved]. F1000Research 2016, 5:692 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.8414.1)