Relationship between altmetrics and citation based metrics a study of literature in physics

Abstract

The study analyses publications in Physics having at least one author from an Indian Institution in various sources of altmetrics. The study also analyses the relationship between altmetrics and citation-based metrics. The highest coverage of publications in the study was found in Mendeley followed by Twitter and Facebook. The coverage of publications in the rest of the sources of altmetrics was found to be too low. Spearman s rank correlation coefficient was used for analyzing the relationship between altmetrics and citations as the data was found to be skewed and not normal. Correlations were also calculated for those publications having at least one altmetrics or citation counts. Statistically significant weak to low positive correlations were found in majority of the cases in the study. The correlations improved for publications having at least one Mendeley readership count, Twitter mention or Facebook mention. The study found that due to the low coverage of publications in sources of altmetrics they should be cautiously used for research evaluation. The study concludes that altmetrics should be used as complimentary to citation-based metrics instead of completely replacing them for capturing a different impact of research. Difference in nature of disciplines resulting in difference in popularity should also be considered while using altmetrics for research evaluation. newline