Relationship between Altmetrics and Citations A Study on the Highly Cited Research Papers

Shabnam Heydari; Maryam Shekofteh; Maryam Kazerani

doi:10.14429/djlit.39.4.14204

Shabnam Heydari Department of Medical Library and Information Science, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Maryam Shekofteh Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Paramedical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran
Maryam Kazerani Department of Medical Library and Information Science, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14429/djlit.39.4.14204

Keywords: Altmetrics, Citations, Highly cited articles, Surgery, Social media, Mendeley

Abstract

The present study aims to assess highly cited articles using altmetrics and citations and identify the relationship between them. The statistical population consists of all the highly cited articles on surgery indexed on the Web of Science. The number of article citations was measured using the Web of Science and the altmetric score of the articles using the Altmetric Bookmarklet. The analysis of the data was carried out using descriptive statistics and Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Of the 1077 highly cited surgery articles, 62.74 per cent had an altmetric score. The highest number of received citations was 1787, and the highest altmetric score was 2019. A positive and significant correlation was observed between the number of citations and the policy-making documents, Wikipedia citations and CiteULike (P<0.001). A positive but non-significant correlation was also observed between the number of citations and the number of Mendeley readers (r=0.02, P>0.05). A poor, negative and significant correlations were observed between the number of citations and the overall altmetric score of the highly cited surgery articles (r=-0.235, P<0.001). The findings may be due to the different pattern of using social media by the surgery researchers compared to the researchers of other fields. Altmetrics can only be used to complement citations and not replace them.

Author Biographies

Shabnam Heydari, Department of Medical Library and Information Science, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Mrs Shabnam Heydari has a Master Degree in Medical Library and Information Science from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. She has a Bachelor degree in library and information science. Her areas of interest are altmetrics and scientometrics.

Maryam Shekofteh, Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Paramedical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran

Dr Maryam Shekofteh is a PhD in Medical Library and Information Science from IRAN. She is Associate Professor and the Head of the Department of Medical Library and Information Science in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. She has published about 40 papers in journals. Her areas of interest are: Scientometrics, altmetrics, scientific communication, etc.

Maryam Kazerani, Department of Medical Library and Information Science, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Dr Maryam Kazerani presently works as Assistant Professor in Department of Medical Library and Information Science, Faculty of Paramedical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. She has more than 30 research paper in English and Persian language to her credit. Scientific evaluations of thesauri, Evidence Based studies, Research methodology in librarianship and information science, health literacy, information literacy and bibliometrics are among her research interests. She is the executor of the National research project in Iran named Persian Medical Thesaurus.