Tweets vs. Mendeley readers: How do these two social media metrics differ?
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Stefanie Haustein
Stefanie Haustein is a postdoctoral researcher in bibliometrics at the Université de Montréal and a research analyst at Science-Metrix in Montreal, Canada. She received her PhD in information science from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. Her current research focuses on altmetrics.
École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information, Université de Montréal, C. P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7 (Canada) and Science-Metrix Inc., 1335, Avenue du Mont-Royal E, Montréal, QC, H2J 1Y6 (Canada)
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Vincent Larivière
Vincent Larivière holds the Canada Research Chair on the transformations of scholarly communication and is assistant professor of information science at the Université de Montréal. He is is also an associate researcher at the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies and a regular member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie of the Université du Québec à Montréal.
École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information, Université de Montréal, C. P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7 (Canada) and Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST), Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal, CP 8888, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8 (Canada)
Mike Thelwall is a professor of information science at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He received his PhD in mathematics from Lancaster University, UK. His current research focuses on altmetrics, sentiment analysis and webometrics.
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1LY (UK)
Didier Amyot obtained a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics at the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and has worked at Science-Metrix as a senior programmer during data collection for this study. Currently he works on ustra.ca, a cryptographically secure web voting system, of which he is the founder.
Science-Metrix Inc., 1335, Avenue du Mont-Royal E, Montréal, QC, H2J 1Y6 (Canada)
Isabella Peters is professor for web science at the ZBW and the Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Germany. Having intensively researched user generated content, folksonomies and social media she received her PhD in information science from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. Her current research include altmetrics, user generated content in scholarly communication and science 2.0.
ZBW – German National Library of Economics, Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Duesternbrooker Weg 120, 24105 Kiel (Germany)
Abstract
A set of 1.4 million biomedical papers was analyzed with regards to how often articles are mentioned on Twitter or saved by users on Mendeley. While Twitter is a microblogging platform used by a general audience to distribute information, Mendeley is a reference manager targeted at an academic user group to organize scholarly literature. Both platforms are used as sources for so-called “altmetrics” to measure a new kind of research impact. This analysis shows in how far they differ and compare to traditional citation impact metrics based on a large set of PubMed papers.
About the authors
Stefanie Haustein is a postdoctoral researcher in bibliometrics at the Université de Montréal and a research analyst at Science-Metrix in Montreal, Canada. She received her PhD in information science from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. Her current research focuses on altmetrics.
École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information, Université de Montréal, C. P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7 (Canada) and Science-Metrix Inc., 1335, Avenue du Mont-Royal E, Montréal, QC, H2J 1Y6 (Canada)
Vincent Larivière holds the Canada Research Chair on the transformations of scholarly communication and is assistant professor of information science at the Université de Montréal. He is is also an associate researcher at the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies and a regular member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie of the Université du Québec à Montréal.
École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information, Université de Montréal, C. P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7 (Canada) and Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST), Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal, CP 8888, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8 (Canada)
Mike Thelwall is a professor of information science at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He received his PhD in mathematics from Lancaster University, UK. His current research focuses on altmetrics, sentiment analysis and webometrics.
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1LY (UK)
Didier Amyot obtained a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics at the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and has worked at Science-Metrix as a senior programmer during data collection for this study. Currently he works on ustra.ca, a cryptographically secure web voting system, of which he is the founder.
Science-Metrix Inc., 1335, Avenue du Mont-Royal E, Montréal, QC, H2J 1Y6 (Canada)
Isabella Peters is professor for web science at the ZBW and the Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Germany. Having intensively researched user generated content, folksonomies and social media she received her PhD in information science from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. Her current research include altmetrics, user generated content in scholarly communication and science 2.0.
ZBW – German National Library of Economics, Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Duesternbrooker Weg 120, 24105 Kiel (Germany)
©2014 Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Social media in academia: How the Social Web is changing academic practice and becoming a new source for research data
- Special Issue
- Tweets vs. Mendeley readers: How do these two social media metrics differ?
- Faculty and student interactions via Facebook: Policies, preferences, and practices
- How Science 2.0 will impact on scientific libraries
- Sifting the sand on the river bank: Social media as a source for research data
- Twitter data: What do they represent?
- Can electoral popularity be predicted using socially generated big data?
- Self-Portrayals of GI Junior Fellows
- Preface to the self-portrayals of the GI Junior Fellows
- Network analysis literacy, data analysis literacy, and socioinformatics
- Developing sociotechnical systems with special focus on quality
- Persönliches
- Heinz Zemanek zum Gedenken
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Social media in academia: How the Social Web is changing academic practice and becoming a new source for research data
- Special Issue
- Tweets vs. Mendeley readers: How do these two social media metrics differ?
- Faculty and student interactions via Facebook: Policies, preferences, and practices
- How Science 2.0 will impact on scientific libraries
- Sifting the sand on the river bank: Social media as a source for research data
- Twitter data: What do they represent?
- Can electoral popularity be predicted using socially generated big data?
- Self-Portrayals of GI Junior Fellows
- Preface to the self-portrayals of the GI Junior Fellows
- Network analysis literacy, data analysis literacy, and socioinformatics
- Developing sociotechnical systems with special focus on quality
- Persönliches
- Heinz Zemanek zum Gedenken
